"What's your Sign?"

Passing Gene Autry on the streets of Lone Pine?  Serenaded by Singing Cowboys?  Roy Rogers and Dale Evans in the coffee shop?  Twilight Zone music cuing up?  Little did we know that Lone Pine played host to decades of Hollywood movie casts who arrived to build fake gold rush towns, bandit hideouts, and galactic landscapes in the Alabama hills that separate the valley from the high Sierra peaks looming to the west.

Whether standing in for a far-off planet, Afghanistan, or Oklahoma, the unique rock formations of the Alabama Hills have been featured in hundreds of movies.  Remember the Lone Ranger speeding across the desert on Silver?  Alabama Hills!

So it makes some sense that Lone Pine has a 50's vibe that is especially anchored by it's main street, peppered with large painted metal neon signs. My favorite, the Merry Go Round, now tops a Chinese Restaurant.  The sign seems lifted right from vintage Hollywood Blvd.

We stop into the Alabama Hills Cafe for an old-fashioned diner breakfast.  The Cafe is a favorite (according to Yelp) with Mt. Whitney hikers who are celebrating their 21-mile ascent to the highest peak in the continental US.  Plates piled high with egg scrambles and pan fried potatoes are expertly slung by sassy waitresses.  

The gigantic trout illuminated in the Sporting Goods sign hails back to a day when the Owens River teemed with trout.  Back in 1913, Los Angeles DWP diverted water from the Owens River into the LA Aqueduct.  This begat the dramatic decline of the Valley, starved for water.  In 2006 a re-watering project began to restore 62 miles of the Owens River habitat.  Now, kayakers, fisherman and wildlife are returning to the Owens River.   The neon trout provides a cool icon of this effort.

How is it we passed the Film History Museum without ever stopping before?  Luckily, the Ranger at the Forest Service/Park Service Visitor Center urged us to stop in.  What a kick!  We watch the introductory film and are transported to our childhoods in front of black and white TV sets, watching cowboy movies and TV series, once again humming the Bonanza theme.  Suddenly, it is obvious that most of our favorite western shows were filmed right here in the Alabama Hills.  Not to mention, sci-fi thrillers like Star Trek, and movies like Tremors.

The displays are fantastic!  Giant movie posters, gleaming cars used in movies, sets and costumes.  Amazingly decorated saddles and memorabilia.  All for a $5 entry fee. 

The Lone Ranger and Tonto agree to have their picture taken with us.  Hard for cardboard cut-outs to argue, anyway.

I laugh that a movie set in Oklahoma could use the Alabama Hills as a set - never saw such rock formations in Oklahoma!

On our way to hike in the Alabama Hills, we pause in front of this spread with their humorous "Sex Drive" sign.

This is the view from their house - the snow-dusted Sierra Crest range majestically towering over the Alabama Hills.

The Mobus Arch is a popular hike and from the correct angle we spy the heart shaped window that nature has carved in the arch wall.

After a short hike, we drive up the steep, curving road to the Mt, Whitney portal - the starting point for the intrepid hikers of Mt. Whitney.  There are lots of warnings about proper preparation for the hike - days of elevation acclimation, packing out your own poop, dangers, weather, etc.  I realize that the only Mt. Whitney hike I will ever take is the 4 mile downhill hike from the Portal.  Locals say it is spectacular.  

Talk about contrasts!  The waterfall that rushes down to the portal campground is almost completely frozen (already).

We are determined to squeeze in a visit to Manzanar - the largest detention camp in California - it housed 11,000 Japanese Americans and immigrants between 1942 and 1945.  We tour the beautifully designed Visitors Center and hear first-hand stories of loss, despair, and resiliency experienced by the Japanese, torn from their West Coast communities and forced to live in bare isolation during the war years.  The poster above depicts a few of the 26.000 who still chose to enlist in the service, even though they and their families were treated as domestic enemies.

This photo is of a huge fabric hanging imprinted with the names of all the detainees.  Hundreds of marriages were performed and hundreds of babies were born at Manzanar. People were forced to share quarters with multiple families.  Barracks were thrown up almost overnight, so they were poorly constructed, leaking rain, sand and wind.  However, families set to work to convert the barracks into make-shift homes and the desert landscape into gardens.  

The mess hall also served as a dance hall for the detainees, and the ghostly photo on fabric gives an impression of what that was like.

Night falls quick here so we high-tail it south to reach Fossil Falls campground just before dark.  Our last dinner of pasta and salad, the last bottle of wine and the last game of cards.  Women won both games!