Under a Big Sky

This is almost the final instalment in the Great Tour of America and Italy from last year - I just thought I'd capitalise that to make it look Big and Important - a trick learned from A.A. Milne. I'm going to need to go on another trip to get some more adventures about which to blog. In the meantime...

Lone Pine apparently used to have an iconic pine tree which has since blown down, so the town should really be renamed No Pine.

We have missed their 19th film festival by a day. This festival celebrates Westerns and famous actors such as Gary Cooper, Hop-along Cassidy, Kirk Douglas and the bloke who played the Lone Ranger. The surrounding mountains have been used as scenery for many a film.

John Wayne stayed in the very same hotel as we do. Our room is old-fashioned with a Wild West feel – there are stencilled images printed on the wooden furniture, a green and purple flowery carpet, and a friendly receptionist.

Dinner at the Merry-Go-Round restaurant is delicious. In keeping with the area, I have pea soup and then filet steak with beans and twice-baked potato. We share a bottle of Pepper Grove cabernet sauvignon which is a Californian wine imported from Napa. The restaurant is in a building like a tent or an octagonal big top and the food is excellent. I enjoy the atmosphere and it is the perfect end to a great day.

The next morning we wake up to the most amazing scenery. Wow, what a view! We’re flanked by real cowboy mountains; jagged peaks haunted with boulders and topped with snow. Him Outdoors discovers the trail up Mt Whitney is one that can be walked in a couple of days and he is itching to get up there.

Unfortunately we haven’t got a couple of days so we quickly explore the town (which sells crystals, rocks, wood carvings, pottery, moccasins, cowboy boots, belts, fringed jackets, cowboy hats and crockery) and have breakfast at a diner where the owner collects butter churns. Her admission of this fact leads to an unsolicited conversation with a punter who collects random antiques from radios to roller-skates.

We drive on again through towns such as Big Pine and Independence, the administrative centre of Inyo County complete with a courthouse and, according to its brochure, ‘a patriotic flag-waving Fourth of July celebration, featuring an early-morning flag-raising, pancake breakfast, a 4km/10km run/walk, a nice small-town parade, delicious home-made ice cream and pie social, kids’ activities (including a frog jumping contest), an arts and crafts show, deep-pit barbecue and, to complete an exciting day, a sunset fireworks show.’

Bishop is less dramatic. As well as the usual Denny’s, Burger King, MacDonald’s, Taco Bell, KFC and Karl Jnr, the town boasts such gems as Spellbinder Books and Coffee, Brock’s Flyfishing Specialists, Anne Marie’s Wedding Register, El Dorado Saving’s Bank, Giggle Springs Gasoline Market, Jumpin Juice and Java, Erick Schatt’s Bakery, and The Meat House.

This is an outdoor paradise with its clean air and bright light. We are in the High Sierras where people come to fish, hunt, shoot, trek, cycle, hike, and generally revel in the bluest skies I’ve seen outside Queenstown. We approach Sherwin Summit (7,000ft) where the steep sides of the archetypal American mountains are clad with pine trees and a sprinkling of snow.

Road signs promise twisting roads and bounding deer for the next umpteen miles. There are signs to Tom’s Place and an exhortation to report drunk drivers to the police. The landscape of boulders and trees is dotted with wilderness lodges, and paths wind through the scenery, beckoning runners to follow. Him Outdoors says, ‘This is my sort of stuff. I like this.’

Death Valley 1

As if America isn’t weird enough, it has Death Valley, where visitors to the park are greeted by coyotes and massive ravens. Joshua trees pockmark the scenery and the sun picks out the contours and the ripples on the sand dunes. There are fantastic colours in the rocks – who would have thought it could be so brutally beautiful?

Apparently a lot of car companies come here to test drive new vehicles. There is no test track as such, but the varied terrain and dramatic change in temperature and altitude are perfect to try out engines and breaks.

Mt Whitney, the highest point in ‘the lower 48 states’ is less than 100 miles from Badwater Basin – elevation -282feet and the lowest point in North America. The temperature changes 5°C for every 1,000 feet, and there are three ranges of approximately 10,000 feet and two valleys of searing hot temperatures within the park, which would certainly create some challenging driving conditions.

Despite it's unprepossessing facade, the Ensenada Grill does a good breakfast. The cheerful, sunny roadside diner has Mexican music and jolly toothless staff. The décor may be basic (plastic covers over yellow tablecloths and woven red and green tablemats) but the food is good. We both have Ensenada skillets – Him Outdoors has one with ham, bacon and chorizo sausage, while my vegetarian version has peppers, mushrooms, broccoli, potatoes, onions and tomatoes.

Him Outdoors chooses tortillas and I have biscuits and gravy as my stodge – again, very basic but hearty. The gravy is a cracked pepper white sauce. Both are accompanied with homemade salsa and endless cups of black filter coffee from a pot, with which the waitress just keeps filling our cups. How I love it; and how Kiwis with their precious and pretentious ‘coffee culture’ would loathe it.

The wind is ferocious at Ryolite, an old ghost town. When gold was discovered in the early 1900s, 10,000 people flocked here – three railroads and many buildings emerged, including casinos and a three-storey bank. The boom went bust as the price of gold fell through the floor and the ensuing panic ended the gold rush by 1912. Now the town is eerie with the sound of bits of bank and casino flapping and whistling in the wind, and signs by dilapidated stores caution ‘Rattlesnakes’.

In a strange sculpture park is a lego-woman. She is made from pink blocks with long blonde hair and a yellow pubic triangle. Her big pert breasts stick straight out in front at right angles and she is on her knees. Is this how pioneers thought women should look? Some men have not moved on in a hundred years.

Entering Death Valley National Park again, we cross the state line. The sign welcoming drivers to Nevada is riddled with bullet holes. The mustard coloured hills bear testament to the harvesting of borax at Harmony.

Old pictures show the mines and mule trains – this area is certainly rich in minerals and was ripe for exploitation until Congress passed the Mining in Parks Act in 1976, which restricted and regulated mining in Death Valley for the first time. The park is now closed to new mining claims, and previously established claims and mines are closely monitored.

The colours at Zabriskie Point, and indeed everywhere, must change hourly and would be worth photographing throughout the day. This is a crazy place full of geological treasures.

The National Park brochure claims, ‘The colourful and rugged terrain shouts tales of cataclysmic forces that thrust thick rock layers upwards and of opposing erosional forces battling to tear them down. Desert winds whisper romances of the past – of the ’49ers lured by the glitter of gold and of Chinese labourers scraping borax-rich crystals from the valley floor.'

From Dante’s View, the mineral deposits in the mountains are the colours of the Firenze cathedral’s marble walls. Rivers of salt run down the valley.

At Badwater Basin, below sea level, salt flats stretch for miles; their crusty layers look like a particularly unappetizing meringue or Kendal mint cake.

Strange miniature pinnacles dot the Devil’s Golf Course and cairns are made from slabs of salt.

The artist’s palette features mounds and bands of many hues, as though the artist has dumped all his colour and pigments into one vivid lump. The residue of the excavated minerals leaves colourful rainbows on the land.