Gray’s Meadow CG, Independence, Ca

Sunday: We took our time preparing to leave. Most everyone in the campground here at Brown's Town campground in Bishop is leaving today. We waited until the crowd left and the dump was free. Actually it was vacant, it cost $3 even though we were guests.

We fueled the RV and left town on highway 395. We stopped in Independence at the Eastern California Museum.


We then headed up the hill to Gray's Meadow Campground. We're about 6000 feet up perched on the side of the Eastern Sierra mountains looking out over Owen's Valley. We're camped right next to a rushing creek in the trees. Quite nice. We'll be here a few days until we get the urge to move on or have to leave due a reservation for our campsite on the 9th.

Dinner was a nice steak, baked potatoes and asparagus.

We had a nice campfire in the evening baking apples in the coals for desert.

Monday: Lou and I took a walk around camp and over the hill behind our camp looking for wildlife. Little seen.

We had another campfire before breakfast of masa with berries. The evenings have been so cool we haven't been interested in have fires until now.

It's cloudy today. We drove up the hill to Onion Valley where the trail to the Kearsarge Pass begins. It's a great hike when the snow's gone. There is a lot of snow still remaining. Not much chance of hiking today. We even had some fresh snow while there.


Lots of flowers in the valley. These were captured on th road back down to Independence.

Even the cactus had bloomed. These purple daisey like flowers are quite nice.

Some are small, some big. Some are everywhere like the red flowers on the right thatwe'd seen up north.

The wind made it difficult to capture some.

There were more here that we haven't seen before.

Some make a nice bouquet by themselves.

Left above, the view of the mountains West of our camp from across the creek behind our camp. Above right, there is still some snow up at onion Valley about 2-3000 feet higher


Colorful flowers. These were seeen on the road to the hatchery on Oak Creek Road.


These White poppies are interesting, about twice as big asthe golden poppies.

We drove down the mountain to the Mt Whitney Fish Hatchery just North of town. Along the way we stopped several times to take some pictures of the wild flowers. It is one of the nicest hatcheries we've visited. The fish in the pond were huge and hungry.


Above left, the pond at the hatchery where hungry fish are climbing out of the water to feed on the pellets that are sold to feed them (above right).


Above left, the hatchery building is the most ornate we've seen. Above right, the hatchery pond, an oassis.

When we arrived home we had grilled cheese, ham and pepper sandwiches. The weather warmed up some and the sky cleared some and it became a nice day.

We just hung around camp and listened to the roar of the creek next to camp. Desert was a brown rice apple crisp made with peaches instead.
Tuesday: Cereal for breakfast outside in the warm sun. No wind and no clouds today. Maybe we'll catch up on the charge to the batteries.


Another walk along the river and more flowers.

These were seen along the ridge to the north of the river.