Cedar Creek and Lone Pine

---

the only noteworthy thing about Cedar Creek Campground, Sequoia Nat´l Forrest, was that i i had the joint to myself. So, as you do, I busted out the harmonica that I still haven´t learned to play. I spent most of the night trying to play along to "Silver and Gold" by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros and loudly singing along to Hank Williams and Born Ruffians. I made a huge fire and danced around, tooting on the harp - you know, to scare the bears away. They´re rampant in these parts...¨
Then it turned out that someone had shown up in the night, unbeknownst to me. I packed up and split first thing out of emberassment.

Then I tipped the bike over on the side of lake Isabella, saw my first joshua trees and was in the desert.

Lone pine was illin´. I wish I had more time but I wanted be in Vegas for the weekend. Or, so i thought...

---

Photos

Lake Isabella
I"m just going to mention the windsurfers who where booking it along the river in 50mph winds or how choked I was a few miles from here when I found out that lake Isabella was ALSO a reservoir. I'm not going to mention that I bailed on that rut in the road and laid out the bike. I got battery acid on me:(

Yay, Joshua Trees!
Dr Seuss eat your heart out.

Awww, look at the spiny little baby.
Cootchy, cootchy, coo!

Silly mormons!
That doesn't look like Joshua's hands reaching skyward. A crazy-arthritic desert shaman, maybe... but not good ol' Josh...

Joe's shack of Jerk
They jerked everything at this place! Turkey, Me, Buffalo, Snake, Beef. Wait what?! Nothing, musta been a typo...
But they did Jerk a bit too much money out of my pocket, that's for sure.

Mt. Whitney towering over the desert
I pulled into the Portagee Joe campground just after the sun ducked behind the Sierras.

You have to wonder who'd want to live in a place called Stovepipe Wells
I submit: Anyone who's from Furnace Creek.

What a photographer!
But you have to admit that's pretty cool. (Those aren't piles of dirt in the mid-ground, their desert foothills. Sorry but being a native of foot-hill country, seeing cacti below snow-capped peaks really does it for me...

Owens Lake
WTF? There's no lake there! There's just some puddles in the middle of a saline lake bed. Sorry Owen, but your lake sucks.