Also known as that time I took my in-laws to a nudist colony.
Ryan is obsessed with the Eastern Sierras. He’s been a couple of times on fishing/camping trips with his buddies, and he raves about it every time he returns. So when Ryan’s parents were coming to join us on our adventure for a couple of weeks, he really wanted to take them to the Eastern Sierras for part of the trip. We drove our little caravan of campers up from Joshua Tree to the Eastern Sierras, which is an area of central California that falls on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains, close to Yosemite and Sequoia National Park but on the other side of the range. It is a beautiful, remote part of the state where the mountains fall straight down into a beautiful open valley. It’s difficult to get to, which is why it remains relatively unspoiled and off the beaten path – perfect for us!
The Alabama Rocks area is not to be missed – it’s in the foothills to the Eastern Sierras, and is a strange, random collection of huge boulders and rock formations, not unlike Joshua Tree in parts. You can camp for free back amongst the rocks (which we may go back to do later in our trip), and there are a few little hikes to check out the rock formations.
Alabama Hills
Mobius Arch
From the Alabama Hills, we drove north and camped in a little RV park hidden beneath the mountains, called Keough Springs, just south of Bishop, where you can hop in the natural hot springs pool for some rest and relaxation. Our real destination in the Eastern Sierras, though, were the Benton Hot Springs, which had been recommended to us by Tom, who built our trailer. Tom and his wife are pretty wonderful and are camping wizards by now (I mean come on, they build teardrop campers for a living!), so if they recommend it, we will always try it out. Benton Hot Springs is a tiny little town in the Eastern Sierras that used to be a pretty happening little spot decades ago, but is now a diamond in the rough and a hidden gem for campers. There is a little bed and breakfast and about 10 campsites at the little Benton Hot Springs Inn. Each campsite has its own private natural hot springs tub, and other than that it’s a no frills kind of campsite. No running water or restroom facilities (but the port-a-potties aren’t too bad!). People don’t go for the facilities, though, they go for the hot tubs.
Benton Hot Springs
There are some rules to natural hot springs hot tubbing – no tub hopping being the most important, apparently. So you can kind of see what kind of place this might turn into if they have to ban you from sharing tubs with your neighbors. Oh, and clothing optional in your own tub. YEP, we didn’t read that before we booked the campsites. Lo and behold, we drove into the campgrounds to head to our site in the back, and there’s one of our camping neighbors just hanging out in his birthday suit about to hop into his hot tub. Full frontal. And my mother-in-law about had a heart attack. I mean I’m okay with it, but I was not expecting it, and DID YOU SEE THAT?! – this was the reaction repeated a number of times. We may have pushed the parents outside their comfort zone a little too far on this trip – the natural hot springs nudist colony.
To be clear, I didn’t see any naked folks in the tubs for any of the time that we were there. But it is something to be aware of I suppose (whether something you’d like, or something you’d not like – up to you!). Actually most of the other campers were there with kids, on spring break, or were there in larger groups of adults, having a great time hanging out, BBQ-ing and drinking some beers, lounging in their tubs. It is a wonderful thing to have a natural hot spring tub at your disposal anytime you’d like.
While we were in the Eastern Sierras, we drove up to Mammoth to check it out – we didn’t ski, though there’s tons of snow on the slopes this year. We just wanted to see what it looked like, and we grabbed a beer and lunch at a delicious brewery. My favorite thing that we did was to hike to the Ancient Bristle Cone Pine Forest in the White Mountains.
Because it’s still early in the springtime, snow was blocking part of the road up to the forest, so we had to park and hike an extra 2 miles up the road to get to the trailheads for hiking. It was a lovely hike on a beautiful, sunny, chilly day. The forest is over 10,000 feet in elevation, so it was a slow hike for us to get acclimated a bit. The Ancient Bristle Cone Pines are the oldest documented living things in the entire world – the ENTIRE WORLD. Right here in our backyard in California. That is just astonishing to me. Many of the trees are over 4,000 years old, with the oldest tree, the Methuselah Tree being more than 4,700 years old. The rangers won’t tell you which tree is the actual Methuselah Tree because they don’t want some idiot to come in and cut it down or vandalize it or cause it some harm. What a shame it is that the state of humanity is such that they have to protect it like this. So you have to content yourself with knowing that you are wandering around underneath the oldest documented tree in the world, even if you don’t know exactly which one it is.
Bristle Cones
The bark on these trees twists and writhes in reaction to the harsh conditions up on the mountains – the wind and snow and nutrient-deficient soil, so the trees are an absolute marvel to look at. There was too much snow to make it on the longer hike, so we will certainly have to come back to this spot one day.
We did a lovely hike to Parker Lake, again traversing on lots of snowy patches, and we weren’t able to make it all the way to the lake, but were able to hike through a lovely alpine wonderland before we had to turn back.
Ryan and his dad took a day to go fishing on the Owens River and caught a couple of smaller brown trout, but more importantly they watched a hatch of flies happen, which is a magical thing for anyone to see, but especially for a fly fisherman.
The parents’ RV
We’ll be back through the Eastern Sierras in a few weeks. We want to hike Mount Whitney, get in some more fishing, and enjoy such a beautiful, peaceful, lovely part of the country.
Hiking with my Coconut
BY Jackie
LOCATION Eastern Sierras, California
