Back in Time

It may seem strange, peering through this on-line window into our lives, to find the Bristlecone Pine Forest re-enter the room. Perhaps the ancient forest has been in our parlor, out of sight the whole time we haven't been posting. That would be nice, if a little dirty and prickly. But it's not the case.

No, we had to drive the full six or so hours to revisit the Bristlecone Pine Forest again after our quick stop back in July, and, although we've only finished posting about that trip recently, it had in fact been more than a month between visits when we pulled into the moonlit campsite Labor Day weekend. In fact, the length of time it took us to tell you about that trip speaks more loudly about the tenor of our lives in August than any post could have. Suffice to say, life was full.

The truth is that our last trip there only wet our appetite for exploring the rest of the area. There are miles of Bristlecone forest in the high regions of the White Mountains, as well as many more miles of Pinyon-Juniper habitat. Add to that the region's mysterious-but-lovely remote character, and we just had to revisit.

Anyway, we had a good trip. The Guenthers came up on Saturday with their baby, and we spent some fun times with them. Unfortunately, Elijah didn't savor the altitude, and spent one unpleasant night in camp, and therefore a more pleasant second night in a motel in Bishop. Libby and I spent three nights in all at the campground. We got there really early Saturday morning (about 1:00) to find that the whole campground was full. We found a handy Pinyon Pine to throw up our tent under, and then moved into some vacancies created when our neighbors headed out in the morning (lucky day!).

We had brought some peanuts along, so we threw some of those out in hope of attracting some Pinyon Jays to our campsite. Then we went for a drive out to Deep Springs College, a famous migrant trap near the Nevada border. It's pretty dramatic - a giant dead-end valley with a salt pan and a single green patch of trees at the college. Unfortunately, it's private property with posted No Trespassing signs, so we came right back to camp. On the way, we spilled three gallons of water in our car! Yay! Mildew!

Libby and friend

We spent the rest of the first day hanging around camp with the car doors open and teaching the neighborhood Scrub-Jays and Chickadees to eat out of our hands. We were pretty excited to have our first Californian Juniper Titmouse come into a pan of water we put out, too. When the Guenthers arrived that afternoon, we all went for a walk in the Schulman Grove area that we had visited earlier. Elijah fussed a bit, so he didn't get to ride in the cool baby back-pack that the Guenthers had borrowed for hikes. He did get to see some cold old trees, though, but he may not have appreciated that. I'm not sure.

The next day we went all the way to Patriarch Grove. That's a long drive on a dirt road to the upper limits of a Bristlecone forest. The largest Bristlecone in the world is there, and we had fun wandering around in the alpine wonderland. The whole area is a brilliant white from the dolomite the trees grow in, and there are only stunted plants growing between the gnarled Bristlecone trunks. It's 11,000'! We saw a lot of people around. It turned out that the gate to the Bancroft Research Station on White Mountain (California's third highest mountain) was open, so a lot of people were making the visit to the summit. It cuts 4 miles off the round trip, and apparently those two miles are pretty steep. That explained the crowd at the campground.

Group picture with The Patriarch

That evening the Guenthers decided to make a trip to town, so Libby and I had dinner by ourselves, burned all the firewood, and helped Dustin pack up.

They drove back up the next day and we all went for a hike to the Methuselah Grove, where some of the oldest non-clonal organisms in the world grow. They don't tell you which tree is Methuselah (4800 years old!), but we had fun guessing. We also debated the thorny issue of whether or not you can say you saw a specific tree (Methuselah) if you don't know that you saw that tree, but you have reasonable assurance you saw every tree that it could have been.

After the hike, Libby and I were in a fine hurry to get home before it got too late. Unfortunately, construction around Independence meant it took about two hours to get from the Bristlecones to Lone Pine! Yuck.

I took lots and lots and lots of picture on this trip, and put too many of them on Flickr. Still, if you like babies, birds, mountains, or trees (which you should, you know): take a look: Labor Day Weekend Camping.