Okay I love this shot. I took it on Monday, about noon, before I headed home, before my tire blew out at high speed on Highway 14 just entering Lancaster. But hey, at least it didn't happen on the 395 north of Mojave out of cell range - or even further north on the 395. I would have been standing on the side of the road in the windblast chill of the Southern Sierra shadows waiting for a CHP to happen by.
Maybe it was somewhere on the dirt roads of the old Alabama Hills and maybe even when I stopped to take this photo that I ran over a shard of glass or rusty nail dating to some western film shot there in the 20's that lead to the flat tire. In any event, I made it home safely. But I keep thinking about the Eastern Sierra, which has called me back again and again over the years and decades, ever since my father first drove me through in the summer of '74. Thinking about it so much, in fact, that I just signed up for a Sierra Club hike to Lone Pine Lake on May 17, with a two-night car camp in the Alabama Hills.
So can you identify Mt. Whitney? Hint it's the tallest mountain in California, but it doesn't look that way in the photo.
