Hot springs

After last nights disappointing experience with Keough, we did a little internet research on our fabulous working free wifi connection (yes, it really works!), and decided to go to the tubs near Benton Crossing. The drive is only 30 minutes, but because there is still three feet of snow at that higher elevation, we had to walk the last 1000 feet or so to the tub. It turned out to be beautiful: panoramic views of the Sierra and White mountains, hot water and no shady characters. We took turns taking dips and taking care of the angry little baby.




After tubbing, we tried to get up to the Buttermilks. We made it most of the way, and actually were only around 100 feet from the Peabody boulders, but I didn't want to risk getting stuck. Unfortunately, there really wasn't any room to turn around, so I did a little donut on the slushy snow, pointed the subie back down the road and fled.

More unfortunate still, I must have hit a pothole or rock on the way out, because I started getting a strange and troubling sound out of the front left wheel well. It almost sounded like we were dragging something metallic. After a few fruitless minutes of trying to figure out what vital car-part we were now dragging, we called AAA.

The towing service showed up 20 minutes later and the driver was able to quickly diagnose the car: a bent heat brake heat shield which was rubbing against the rotor. Fortunately, as far as things that can be damaged by rocks, this is pretty minor. He gave it a whack with a hammer and the noise went away. Just to be sure, I headed to the local service shop. The mechanic got the subie up on the lift and double checked all the shields, confirming that the front left shield had been bent slightly inwards. I was pretty surprised to see how much plastic there is under there. Maybe its time for an aftermarket aluminum skid plate. I probably need one that protects the rear diff though. It was now three o'clock, so we had a few more hours for bouldering... off to the Happy Boulders again!


When we were done, we took a few minutes to take in the glory of the Eastern Sierra at dusk

A new hotel, Eureka Dunes, Keough

A cold wind blows through
our Vagabond motel room
Google? page not found

-- a motel haiku


After another night of incredibly annoying HVAC noisiness, Chloe and I had both had enough. As soon as I got up, I started calling around to other hotels and we settled on the Motel 6 right across the street. The manager must have thought we were a little strange when we demanded to turn on and listen to their heater before accepting the room.


After transferring all of our stuff (mostly baby stuff, actually -- I had somehow only brought one pair of pants for the whole trip) to the motel 6, we set off for the Eureka dunes. We had passed the dunes a while ago one our way to bishop from Death Valley, but it was dark and we were both too tired to camp. The lady at the BLM told us that Eureka was only 45 minutes away, but then corrected herself and said that it was only 45 minutes with her boyfriend driving. "We'll see about that!" I thought to myself. The drive turns out to be around 63 miles from the edge of town to the dunes parking, including some dirt roads, so unless her boyfriend is Colin McRae I'm calling bullshit. That would mean an average speed of more than 80 mph. I would say that its do-able, but requires a fast car with good brakes, or a complete disregard for ones own life. In any event, we arrived at Eureka Dunes 45 minutes (okay, more like an hour) after leaving Bishop.


We Baby-Bjorned up Zoe and headed up some of the smaller dunes on the North side (Google maps link here )
Here Zoe and I are, assessing the situation

We had initially planned on hiking to a higher dune with Zoe, but the sand turned out to be too soft for that. Instead, we took turns guarding Zoe from vultures and walked up by ourselves

and ran down (which is SO much fun!)

Zoe was starting to get a little irritable, so we got our dune jumping in while we could


after I built a makeshift baby tent out of our jackets and my tripod:

You can't see her face in this shot, but she is not at all impressed by my ingenuity. She seemed to enjoy being up there well enough though:


I took a few film and digital shots, before baby entered DEFCON 3 and Chloe started bringing her back to the car




On the way down we got buzzed by an F-18 (probably from China Lake or Nellis)




Flying a $40 million jet low through the desert must be a pretty good job.

Here we are in front of the dunes, and with our footsteps leading up one of the lesser dunes:



From the dunes, we headed back to Bishop, got some sandwiches at Schatt's and headed to the Sad boulders for some steep chossy action:



That last one is a beautiful line, but pretty painful on the fingers. I got to the second to last move, but kept falling off. Next time.

I had heard and seen pictures of the hot springs around Bishop since the first time I came here (around 2002 I think) but had never really had the motivation to go check them out. After a few days of bouldering however, Chloe and I were both ready to find them. There is one right near town called Keough Hot Springs, which is an actual spa with a pool, refreshments etc. I'll leave it to Chloe to describe this, since she went in for a recon mission while I stayed out in the car with ZZN. Suffice it to say that we were unimpressed. There is also the runoff from the hot springs, which I had sometimes heard described as being "scary". After a little hunting, we found the spring, but one look at its denizens convinced us to go somewhere else. A brown 1970 Econoline Van "Serial Killer Special Edition" was parked in front of the springs, with the tailgate open. Inside was a floor to ceiling stack of plastic milk crates of undetermined contents, and a dog was circling the van barking at invisible intruders. Shangri-laaaaaaa! Needless to say, the bathtub in the Motel room was looking pretty good.