Day 13: Battle Mountain NV -> Lone Pine CA

Most of the holdouts at the Super 8 had departed by the time I emerged yawning and blinking from my pit this morning: Larry, Peter & John J, Bill and Niklas.  Jun and Danny then interrupted my meagre breakfast as they too departed, which left just me and Joyce.  She had event busines to attend to in town; I did not and took off southwards in the general direction of south.  NV-305, US-50, NV-361, US-95, NV-360 and US-6 with scarcely any traffic and passing handful of settlements that make Battle Mountain look like New York City: Cold Springs, Middlegate, Gabbs, Luning, Mina, Benton and Chalfant.  Through scenery identical to that around Battle Mountain, viz. mountains and valleys.  With added stroopwafels, for I had been hoarding the packet given to me by the estimable Ligtvoets for just this occasion; my biscuity needs in Battle Mountain having been largely filled by the cookies that are a near 24/7 feature of the Super 8 lobby.

Breakfast Elevenses of Champions, Nevada, Monday

Entering California nothing very much changes except being waved through the Agricultural Inspection Station on the state line.

Crossing into California on US-6

Until, that is, I reached US-395 at Bishop.  Dual carriageway.  Traffic lights and - gasp - traffic.  US-395 in this part of the world runs down the Owens Valley between the White Mountains to the east and the lofty, though not SNO-capped, peaks of the Sierra Nevada to the west.

Lofty peaks of the Sierra Nevada

Rare bit of Owens Valley water that hasn't been diverted to LA

The Owens Valley hav a very interesting history if you are interested in hist. which few boys are.  The white man moved in and displaced the locals around 1870 and turned the place into a prosperous agricultural region thanks to the Owens River.  Until the opening overs of the twentieth century, that is, when the burgeoning city of Los Angeles decided that the Owens River would make a perfect water supply, the facts of a 200 mile separation and a GBFO mountain range notwithstanding.  Thus was built the Los Angeles Aqueduct and by divers more or less snidey means LA collared the water rights in the valley and turned the endorheic Owens Lake into

the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States, and has been known since at least the 1990s as a pervasive source of fine alkaline dust containing harmful levels of particulates and chemicals

This, and much more, is covered in Marc Reisner's book Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water which this Unit commends to anyone interested in why much of the western USA looks the way it does.

Lone Pine lies sixty-odd miles south of Bishop and is at the foot of Mount Whitney, which is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States.  Not much else to add really, except that

1. there are small bats doing Bat Stuffs above the motel car park, and
2. my four-port USB hub inexplicably stopped working when I unplugged the camera from it this afternoon, and
3. the local horriblemarket charges $2.79 for a 12 fl. oz. bottle of milk, the next size up is 4 US pints and I didn't bring my vacuum flask this year because:

• I wasn't doing much travelling, and
• I couldn't find the lid