Alabama Hills arches, 2011

The boulders of Alabama Hills and Mt. Whitney

Just west of Lone Pine, the Alabama Hills are a picturesque range of boulders of all sizes. In fact, it is so picturesque it has been used for location shots in hundreds of movies, mostly westerns. A pamphlet available at the visitor center describes a […]

Death Valley after Christmas 2011

I have never been to Death Valley (except for a very brief visit to Eureka Dunes), so a visit has been high on my to-do list. Karen, however, has not been enthusiastic and whenever I brought the subject up she usually talked about alternatives like Mammoth, Bend, Grand Tetons, Smokey Mountains, or White Mountains (the […]

Steep hike, Cache Creek

Lately, in my geocaching adventures, I’ve been focusing on caches that have a high difficulty and/or terrain rating. (Caches are rated on two criteria. The difficulty (D) rating is supposed to indicate how difficult it is to find the cache, perhaps because of a hard puzzle that must be solved or very effective camouflage. The […]