Day 14: Lone Pine or Cowboy Counrty.

Today is a quiet day, spent exploring Lone Pine. It is a old town in the Sierra Valley, directly on hwy 395, with a population of 1600 people. It has one pharmacy, one groceries store, two saloons and four churches. The rest is filled with small touristic or sport shops and motels. People here are very different then in Groveland; much more down to earth and genuinely friendly. No obligated small talk, and not so incredibly loud. But is it a small town: one of the girls at a western shop could not even imagine that people in europe do not wear cowboy hats! Or hats at all. Just try to explain to somebody why it has been out of fashion for fifty years. Anywhere you go and look you will see pictures of classic movie star cowboys, and people reenacting it. Maybe this rings a bell to the older readers of this blog: a slightly overweight man with a light blue suit -too tight-, white hat and a small black figure 8 mask. Probably someone’s idol, but it looked kind of gay to me. For many years, there is an annual film festival, celebrating the western movie. Since the 1920’s people have come to the hills just outside the town -now called movie hills- to shoot hundreds of cowboy movies and car commercials. This town really likes their movies, their whole identity depends on it. We figured out that every town has a purpose or identity: Groveland is the yosemite portal, Lee Vining the exit and waterplace with Mono Lake right next to it, Bodie is a gold town, Lone Pine used to be a waterplace but Ownen’s Lake is dry, so they adopted a new movie identity.



Bart and I had a breakfast/lunch at a local diner. Good home made burgers for a small amount of money. Luckily for us, there was a ‘boil water warning’ active. Water quality was not guaranteed because of low pressure, so it was obligated to boil. In case of restaurants it means they serve tasty bottled water, instead of the chloride water from the tap. We have gotten pretty used to it, but it is still not nice to drink.

Checking out all the local shops, and talking to the owners was nice. Bart bought a small american flag and a huge black cowboy hat. No less than five beavers have been slayed to provide this head cover. A horse hair band really personalizes it. Time to blend in with the locals. We had a drink in a saloon. The sign at the counter said: “Warm beer, cold food, and bad service”. It was not that bad.





The great west was luring, so we took our metal stallion to movie hills. It is really and inspiring landscape, seen in every big western production. We took some cowboy pictures and shot our own blockbuster cowboy-hunts-car movie. Our attempt to climb mount whitney, by car, was not successful, we did not want to drive too far. The way down was much more fun, it is easy to reach high speeds downhill.



Following the advice of a local shop owner, we had dinner at the Merry Go Around. John Wayne sat here too. Then, of course, there is no place in this town that he has not been. Food there was not cheap but very good. After dinner we had a look at some saloons, but they did not look very inviting. So we spent the rest of the evening watching television. Hey, I told you it was a lazy day!