INDEPENDENCE AND BISHOP--MAY 24 and 25

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Thursday, May 24^th

Started out at 9:30 after breakfast at the motel. Starting mileage was 26,772 skies blue and temperature was 60 degrees.

We drove to the Inyo County Park campground and found a camp spot just outside of the town of Independence, which is the Inyo County Seat. One of the main reasons we were in this area was to do some genealogy research in the courthouse and the Eastern Sierra Nevada Museum. Our grandmother was born in this town and our grandparents were married here in 1891.

We had visited with Dad in1999, but we felt because of time constraints we were unable to get everything looked at. Our plan was to spend a week digging in records, archives, etc. here in Independence and later in the nearby town of Bishop where our great-grandparents were married in 1871 and our grandfather owned a butcher shop.

Our great-great grandfather was appointed the first judge of the county and we wanted a copy of his picture that hangs in the County Courtroom. However, now it was Thursday and then Friday before the 3 day Memorial weekend so we worked to get what data we could for the two days we had!!

Friday, May 25^th

Mileage 26812 Inyo County Park, partly cloudy

We met 3 Southern California women, each with their own Roadtrek, at the park last night and they wanted to know if we were headed to the annual Mule Days in Bishop. Since we hadn’t heard anything about it, we got some info/schedule in the paper from the ladies at the Courthouse while we were there and decided it would be a fun way to spend the 3-day weekend since none of the places we wanted to do research, would be open.

After getting all the info that we could find from the museum and courthouse, we drove to Bishop and found it PACKED with RVs for the week long event. We pulled into a private RV park right in the center of town and the office clerk told us that there were three other Roadtreks parked in her park and if they agreed to let us stay in their long space, she wouldn’t charge us anything. They were the same ladies from Independence so, they let us park in front of them and we then divided the fees up among them and paid them for 2 days of dry camping. The fee was about $20 per night, but we were just across the street from the Arts and Crafts show and less than a block from the parade route.

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