Manzanar Cemetery Obelisk
The Eastern Sierras can seem quite remote, with long stretches of nothing with a few small towns and even fewer large centers. But there is a lot of history in the area, from agriculture to gold rushes to water works disputes. The history has resulted in some unique restrictions to the boondocking in the area, as I was finding out. A bunch of research had resulted in me identifying a potentially really nice spot, but right on the edge of private LA water works land. Read on to find out how that all worked out.
Unusually well preserved mining equipment in the Alabama Hills, probably for use in films
You join me on the drive out of Alabama Hills. I toured the Alabama Hills and Manzanar Relocation Camp while at my previous camp, but revisited them on the drive out of the area. I decided I wanted to keep the pictures and story in one post rather than split into two. The Alabama Hills historically have been a a mining and ranching area, and in more recent history, a backdrop for various movies. I’m not a movie person, but even I recognised the names of some of the old Westerns filmed here. Movie Road is named such because so many films and TV shows have been made in the area. It is a very scenic drive, if a bit of a dusty gravel road. There are quite a few people going by too. What boondocking there is, is all signed as a permitted camping spots. The popularity of the area has led the BLM to close off some roads and limit camping to a few specific areas. While I was there, the spots were mostly full. You’d be wise to come early in the day to hope to get a spot.
Cyclops Arch is one of several arch rocks in the area
I can see why so much filming happens here – the scene of the boulder strewn Alabama Hills with the Sierras behind makes for a striking backdrop, plus you can setup views looking out on scrubby plains that seem to extend forever. There are a lot of interesting rock formations to visit in the area. I didn’t make an effort to seek them out, but stumbled upon Cyclops Arch in my explorations of the area. If you wander around randomly, you’ll discover many interesting shaped boulders to photograph, both big and small.
The interpretive center, check to see if it’s open before you go.
On the way to our next camp we decided to stop at Manzanar Relocation Camp. I had seen the interior of the center, which is the original auditorium converted to an interpretive center now. It was closed on my revisit, but I saw it with my motorcycle tour. Research these sites in advance to make sure they are open on the day your want to visit. If you happen to hit this site on a ‘closed’ day, there is still a lot to see outside, and there are some buildings you can enter like the recreations of the barracks in the area.
The barracks are always open
The area is well worth a visit, including a driving tour through the camp. You could walk, which would emphasize how big this camp was, but most people will want to drive, stopping at sites along the way. The new Japanese Gardens and the Cemetery Obelisk are two things you should try to see for sure. It’s important to understand this period in history; food for thought as to why the current administration would like to wipe anything ‘bad’ from American history displays.
 The Paiute were there first, with irrigation farming |
 A portion of the auditorium as originally built. The rest has been turned into museum area. |
 The rebuilt Japanese Gardens |
 Work truck with the cooking barracks |
Ghost of Kmart in Bishop
I did a run into Bishop for resupply before heading to our next potential spot. Bishop is the major center in the area, having pretty much everything just shy of a Walmart. The Vons I was getting groceries at was part of a larger shopping complex that had the ghost of a Kmart beside it. Bishop has the dubious distinction of being one of the last places Kmart built a new store, this one being of early 2000s vintage, having been an upgrade of the previous store. Having closed in 2020, the town was left without a department store for clothing, at least at any reasonable price. I was looking to extend my time before needing a laundromat, so I was looking to see if anything had replaced the Kmart. It turns out that there is a new Marshalls down the road that now serves those needs, which kept me from having to wait until I got to Reno on my next hop north. Yeah, this area is pretty remote in some ways: the next closest major clothing retailer was in Ridgecrest which I had passed through already a couple of hours south of me.
The rest of my resupply was uneventful. There is no problem dumping/getting water/propane in Bishop. Before heading back out, I joined Carolyn for brunch at El Ranchito, a pretty good spot with a large choice on the menu. The restaurant scene in Bishop punches above its weight, no doubt in part due to tourism being a bigger part of the economy in the area. Agriculture certainly isn’t that big here: The City of Los Angeles brought up most of the water rights starting before World War I. It wasn’t a friendly buyout either; they still refer to the “water wars” talking about the history of the area. It certainly explains all of the LA Private Property signs in the area: they are the owners of most of the private property away from town and they don’t take kindly to strangers camping on their land.
Buttermilk Road in the distance
We left town heading west and up into the Sierra foothills again. I had researched an area of BLM land just outside of the private LA lands. Being able to look at a map is very useful here if you want to find the less obvious camping spots. We were headed up Butter Milk Road, a decent gravel road which goes to a popular rock climbing area. We were turning off a bit before that, following a cart path through the private property to a spot that was just off the private property. The City of LA seems to strategically put up its signs to discourage you from entering an area that actually does have some public land beyond the signs. But the checkerboard of private and public land in the area makes figuring out what is legal to camp on challenging. Some of the more popular spots have a little no camping symbol (tent with a cross through it) to help you confirm you can’t camp here, but there are no signs to tell you it’s OK to camp here – you’re left to figure that out for yourself.
Left: BLM – Right: LA Private
So we had gone down the cart path passing several sites with a no camping sign. That matched with what the maps were telling us. We arrive at our potential spot after navigating some tricky bits of road that we even walked first to make sure they were OK. The spot had no signs saying you couldn’t camp, but just down the way was one of those pesky LA private land signs. However, it was facing 90 degrees away from us, indicating the private property line was beside us, but we were on the BLM side of the line. Just looking at the sign made it look like we might be over the line – we both looked at the land maps carefully to confirm that the property line was away from us, heading into the bushes by the nearby creek.
The spot we had found was very nice. There was a small rock formation right beside us with a creek running by. We were away from the main road – there should not be a lot of people going by, although the nearby rural community resulted in a few people going by in their explorations of the local area. We were close to the Sierra Mountains, within view of some glaciers even.
But it wasn’t to be the perfect spot by any stretch. We were about a klick as the crow flies from the community of Starlite – a ‘burb outlier of Bishop. We quickly found out that the community treats the area we were camped in like their backyard. In fact some people had the opinion that camping wasn’t allowed at all behind their community, as Carolyn found out one morning on her walk. We were expecting a possible visit by enforcement, as the locals have been known to sic the cops on boondockers illegally camping. I’m not against that, except that we were not illegally camping.
In the meanwhile we enjoyed the camp and the beautiful surroundings we were in. It was a popular area with lots of cars going up Buttermilk Road to the climbing rocks, and the parking lot beyond that led to some hikes and rides in the area. We however had hardly anyone go by, there were more people on foot than cars. There was one interesting group with their pet burro going out for a picnic among the rocks. The burrow was led along bare-backed, with the people carrying all the gear. Only in California… I even encountered them on my motorcycle. The burro came out of their picnic spot like a dog investigating a potential threat. THEN the dog came out to see what new human had come into the area.
Mount Tom behind our camp
In other not so good news, Carolyn’s dog Sadie was not feeling so well and had to go into the vet, so I was on my own again for a few days. Sadie turned out to be fine, but we now know that it is a bad idea to let your dog eat the grass in the area as it heads out early and the awns stick to the insides of the dog making them sick. There is a reason I don’t have a pet in this boondocking life – they WILL have additional problems being out and about, and you may be on the hook for big vet bills getting them fixed. Then there is all the restrictions you face as a pet owner on where you can go with your pet, or how long you can be away from your pet. It’s worth it to some people to have a pet, but you do give up some of your freedom with the responsibility of having a pet.
I had some pretty good rides on the motorcycle too as the cart paths go all over the place there. Some of the hills were a bit more challenging than I’d like, mostly being very steep. I had to try for several minutes to get up one hill, not thinking I’d have to go down again too. So I turned the ride into a loop trail, hoping the other downhile wasn’t as bad. It turned out to be better, leading to a nice canyon start with a view. But in closing the loop I had to deal with crossing the same creek we were camped beside further upstream. It was quite deep thanks to it being the spring runoff. Plus, there were a bunch of big rocks on the bottom that I might bounce off, falling into the water with the motorcycle. So I decided a ford with me walking the bike under power was in order. It was easier than I thought, giving a power to the bike and guiding it along with me in my bare feet on what turned out to be slippery big rocks. I probably would have made it riding the bike, but my ford was safer.
With me packing up the last morning there to head to the next spot to meet Carolyn again, I see a vehicle coming into my camp. Seeing “Security” on the side immediately eliminated any concern I was going to get a ticket, they generally can only tell you to move on. I was leaving in half an hour anyways, so no problem there. They turned out to be quite nice, assuring me that they were here only doing ‘education’ telling people if they were somewhere they shouldn’t be and showing them information to figure out where they could be. But the problem was, they thought I couldn’t be there camping, whereas my information showed me I could be there camping. While I let them know my interpretation of the border, they were not going to admit they were wrong and I wasn’t going to stick around to push the issue and see if a cop/court would agree with me or not. It’s not worth it, even if it was a nice spot. I have a rule that I will not stay in a spot if the locals are likely to object, which this certainly qualified as.
So I moved on, probably never to return to this exact spot. There are other not quite as nice spots in the area if I ever want to return to explore the area again. I was off to a spot Carolyn knew north of Bishop. It would be our last boondocking camp together, as I needed to get out of the USA, and out of the coming cold weather in the high Sierras. Join me next time there.
You can see more photos of my spots in the Sierras in my Sierras photoset I have on my Flickr account. I also took a lot of pictures of the Manzanar Relocation Camp, you can see in my Manzanar photoset.
