The Alabama Hills

Spring break has arrived and we wasted no time in planning an adventure for this holiday. Our decision was quite simple! Let's revisit our cancelled plans of last year...a tour to the Paria Wilderness of Southern Utah. For many years we have heard about this wondrous red rock region from our dear friends Dick and Melinda and the spectacular hikes that were available to the fortunate few. So our able navigator mapped out a scenic route (ensuring no unique sights along the way were overlooked), we packed up the bags, loaded up the dog and off we went.

For the young boys of our generation, the super heroes that they lived vicariously through, were not from the comic book, space age or cartoon genres. They were "real men"...flesh and blood, hard riding, hard drinking and hard fighting cowboys
of the wild west. Tom Mix, Roy Rodgers, Hopalong Cassidy and John Wayne portrayed many of those characters.


And so it was that the initial stop on our trip was non other than the legendary stage that these heroes performed on...The Alabama Hills of Lone Pine.

Shadowed by the sharp profile of the towering pinnacles of the Eastern Sierras and the majestic summit of Mount Whitney (it still amazes us that Susie completed a round trip hike to this peak in a single day), the contours and shapes of the Alabama Hills offer a landscape of timelessness, beauty and mystery. 



A mere 100 million years old and 30,000 acres of limitless hiking trails, our camera aficionado was able to capture the magic of the grotesque outgcroppings and formations of weathered granite...etched by a millennia of wind, rain, snow, glaciers and eons of continual sand blasting.

We now look forward to a short drive east through the White Mountains and our maiden voyage to Death Valley National Park and Stovepipe Wells.