The Small Mystery of Monument Peak (Part 3)

(GPS: N34 14.730 W117 21.205)

I knew I was not going to be rewarded with really great views, but getting to this monument was the important thing. Here is close up:

This is California Historcal Landmark NO. 618 the GARCÉS-SMITH MONUMENT. You can try to click the picture to read or read my transcription below.
"The Mojave Indian Trail
Traveled by Francisco Garces
March, 1776, and Jedediah S. Smith
November, 1826."

This monument marks part of the old Indian trail from Needles to San Bernadino. The first person of European heritage that came through here would have been Francisco Garcés. Then, in 1826, mountain man Jedediah Smith came through here. Smith is important for being the first American to explore the land. When he came through here with his party he ended up at the San Gabriel Mission for a time. Since he was on Mexican foreign soil at the time he was checked out as being a possible spy by the Mexican governor of San Diego. He was eventually told he had to go back the way he came. Smith came back this way, but then cut through to the San Joaquin Valley. Then he found a way through the Sierra Nevada. He eventually came back this way the next year on another expedition.

The above picture is looking toward Mt. Baldy and HWY 15 below. If I were to continue to the right side of this picture over the next peak I would see into the Lake Silverwood area.
In the above picture I am looking toward the east. The high peak in the middle and in the background is very close to San Gorgonio. If that mountain is not it, then it is directly behind it. The mountain in the background to the right that seems dwarfed by haze except for the top is San Jacinto.

You can see San Jacinto below too. The trail I took hugs the mountain on the right.
I was certainly happy to solve what appeared to be a mystery to me. There are a few sources that give brief explanations about this site, but this is not your typical California Historical Landmark where big signs identify where it is, nor does it have the typical monument logo.

Okay, so it was time to head down which seems like it should be easy since all I would do is descend back the way I came. Here is what I did not tell you in the previous blogs. I was told that I would have Gatorade in my trunk when I drove out here. I specifically asked about this the morning I came. It turns out I did not have any. Okay, no problem because I had a few bottles of water.

That was okay in the morning, but it was still dry. As it got warmer I started to feel it on the way down. I used the water, but I was still not feeling good. If I were hiking in the Eastern Sierra somewhere this probably would not be an issue. I can go quite sometime in cooler conditions without any drink. In fact, about a month ago I did just that a bunch of times.

This area was different for me. The lack of electrolytes from Gatorade started doing strange things to me. I finished the hike and kept drinking water. On the way home I had a real woozy feeling. I should have stopped off and purchased a drink, but I just kept going home. I did get something to drink at home, but the effects of the heat and what I assume was dehydration stayed with me. For some reason my anxiety level was up for the next few days. This was something I had never experienced on any hike I have done before from Mt. Whitney to Towne Peak in Death Valley. The lesson: make sure you have your Gatorade with you!

Edit (May 2012): I did this hike again in March 2012. The following is the video from it, and a little tribute to my cat as well.

The Small Mystery of Monument Peak (Youtube Version)

Music used from Incompetech.com: Discovery Hit, Expeditionary, Tenebrous Brothers Carnival- Mermaid. 

The Small Mystery of Monument Peak (Part 2)

As I mentioned in the lost blog, I could see into the beginnings of Cajon Pass. On a clearer day it may not be too bad.
However, looking towards the west on this day was not a pretty sight. This is somewhat to be expected in hiking the southern parts of California. Usually, to avoid something like this you have to wait until just after it rains.

I continued up the road after that big switchback. I kept thinking, "How much further?"
There were a lot of burned out trees up here. There were some ravens flying over me. These types of bushy trees were becoming more common as I made this turn.
It started to level out a bit. At one point there was a patch of snow in a shady part of the road. Make no mistake, it was very dry, but I was still feeling okay at this point. I kind of knew I was about to reach my goal. My problem was I was not sure of the exact area I was looking for. The trees started to blot out what you could see ahead.
I was almost a bit unlucky on this one. I kept thinking I had passed the area I was after. As I went through the final half mile I finally saw a split in the road. I could continue to my right, but to the left is the final short ascent to the top of where I was going.
If you look closely in the picture you can see that there is a monument. That was what this whole hike was about. I will wrap this up next time with revealing what the story is behind this place.

Edit (May 2012): I did this hike again in March 2012. The following is the video from it, and a little tribute to my cat as well.

The Small Mystery of Monument Peak (Youtube Version)

Music used from Incompetech.com: Discovery Hit, Expeditionary, Tenebrous Brothers Carnival- Mermaid. 

The Small Mystery of Monument Peak (Part 1)

(GPS: N34 12.520 W117 21.010)

This is one of those hikes I have done that was not really intended to be a scenic one. There is nothing in this one that I experienced the "wow" factor while hiking and viewing the area. This one I had interest in mainly because it was historic, and there was a little mystery involved.

The mystery was that in doing the research for it I could not find very much about it. There are lots of areas called "Monument Peak," but the one I was after is near San Bernadino east of the Cajon Pass. I have driven by this one lots of times going up the pass, but knew very little about it. The actual monument you will see in one of the next blogs is a California Historical Landmark, but everything I read in books about the historical landmarks said to visit the local ranger office for directions. At the time I was not sure if you needed some sort of permit or what to get to it based on what I had read.

I eventually found out enough to get me going, but it was a case of just doing the hike and figuring what was really going on as I was doing it. The morning I did it I drove south of Devore on the 215 HWY. I ended up at Pine Ave., past a residential area, and stopped there. The road I hiked on is called Bailey Canyon Rd. Now it turns out that if you have a good 4WD you do not even have to do any serious hiking. I was there to hike it though and did expect to do about 3,000 ft. of elevation hiking. I cannot remember how many miles it is, but it seemed to me about 5-6 one way.
This is the type of road I hiked on. It is a gradual hike on a dirt road. On the way up I did not encounter anyone, but I did see a man and his dog taking a short cut.
These types of hikes are much different to me than Sierra hikes. Southern California hikes always have a different feel to them in that even though I may encounter forest areas I always feel like I am in the desert going through them. The smell is different, it is much warmer, and I just do not feel as good. Normally, these types of hikes are just exercise hikes to get me prepared for the summer in the north. What kept me going on this one was the end goal and not going up this road to some unknown mountain.
The road goes back and forth through the mountain side with a switchback or two. You do get to see into the beginning of the roads to where Cajon Pass is. I believe the mountain with the most snow on it is Mt. Baldy (Mt. San Antonio)
This next picture shows you how the road goes and then switchbacks higher.

The hike itself was gradual like this, but I kind of got sick of how long it took to do this. It did take about 3 hours which is the normal pace for a 3,000 ft. mountain. As the sun came up the dryness of this hike would start kicking in. It was something that did not affect me on the way up, but it would do some strange things to me on the way down, going home, and over the next few days. I had never had anything this strange happen to me before on a mountain hike.

I will continue this in the next blog.

Edit (May 2012): I did this hike again in March 2012. The following is the video from it, and a little tribute to my cat as well.

The Small Mystery of Monument Peak (Youtube Version)

Music used from Incompetech.com: Discovery Hit, Expeditionary, Tenebrous Brothers Carnival- Mermaid. 

The Dark Side of Yosemite

Alright, now for my negative rant. For the past few weeks I have been quite irritated and angry. I have let a week go by to let me calm down a bit. If for some reason you get the idea that everything I do for this blog runs smoothly when it comes to the location hunts or hiking I do then I must say that this is not the case at all.

When most people go on their vacations or trips it is usually thought to be a relaxing time compared to the work of normal life. For me that is not really the case. As soon as I leave town the work begins...fun work, but still work. There is a lot of planning involved that in my case usually starts a year ahead of time depending on where and the scope of what I intend to accomplish. Of course, if I intend to hike then a certain amount of training takes place as well.

Typically, I know what to expect and all possibilities before I get there. I do expect somethings to go wrong. Most of the time I am prepared for those types of things. Stuff like taking the wrong trails or driving to the wrong areas do happen. Other times you have to have more than enough money with you in case emergencies happen. In the old west, they used to use the term "pluck" to describe a person's preparedness, skill, but a little bit a of luck involved.

This year was a bit different. I prepared like I normally would. I did do a few interesting hikes this summer. I did have a few setbacks, and after each one I thought once it was over there would not be another. There was something that happened to make things very difficult this year. As we finished a hike in Yosemite we decided to drive into Yosemite Valley. I had not been to the valley in about five years. I was eager to go back and had planned on going back for about a year. There were a bunch of things I intended to do there which were to show up on this blog. So, as we were driving HWY 120 we passed Tenaya Lake and then saw Clouds Rest. I have good memories of climbing that. Then I knew we would see Half-Dome below it next on the drive. Wait, uh oh! Something is not right! The smoke was everywhere. Yosemite Valley is out there right?
After driving as far as we could we eventually turned around. I got word from some rangers that it was a "controlled fire" that got out of control. The interesting thing is they had not tried something like this since 1990. However, on August 26, 2009 they decided to do it.

Okay, I was slightly irritated at this point. Now, at first, I thought they would have it taken care of in a few days to at most a weeks time period. Then I could go back and visit the valley. This was not the case at all. In fact, not only was Yosemite contaminated with smoke the nearby areas outside Yosemite, including where I live in the summer, to Carson City, NV were poisoned with smoke. On some days it would be clear in the morning and I would think things would change only to get the heavy smoke in the afternoon. Sometimes I would wake up at 4am only to smell the heavy smoke coming through my window.

As the days went along other setbacks would take place, but the fire in Yosemite was a major catastrophe for what I had planned. It really is not fun taking pictures or video of scenic areas with the haze of smoke lingering. Some of what I did was not that bad, and I will show some of it over the next few months.

On the last few days I was there we had planned a hike to Mt. Hoffman. We held off doing it as long as we could with the hope that even if there was some smoke we might still enjoy doing it and have some views from the top. We then found out that the fire was 50% contained. It was now or never for this trip.

We passed the unmanned ranger station entrance before 7am, but as we got to road to the trailhead the smoke was the worst we had seen. You could probably see about a 1000 ft. at most during that morning hour. We decided to turn around.

Back at the entrance we told the ranger we had drove up and back for maybe about 30 minutes and the smoke was much worse that expected. Technically, that was not really true when we looked at our watches it was really about 50 minutes; our sense of time was lost. He immediately gave us a hard time saying he had been there since 6:56am (We must have come through around 6:45-50am). He was really being pedantic about this. True, it was only a $20.00 fee to enter the park, but we really did not even do anything so we really did not feel like we had to pay. He eventually became a little more reasonable, and we told him we stayed on the road so he let us go.

I thanked him, but I have to admit though, as we drove out and I thought about it, I really wanted to hit him for acting that way. I was pretty much demoralized at this point over all the major stuff I wanted to do this summer. Of all times of the year, they did a "controlled burn" in the heart of the summer during tourist season. Why not wait until after Oct. 15 or sometime in Nov. when the season is practically over?

So, I have to admit that Yosemite is sort of a bad word to me right now. I really do not have the desire to enter the park again right now. Eventually, I will be posting what I did this time around when I get some enthusiasm back, but I think I am just going to show other things in the meantime.

Jimmy Stewart at Convict Lake

(GPS: N 37 35.650 W 118 51.085)

When I originally came to Convict Lake last year it was in the morning before I went to Hot Creek. The two areas are not that far away from each other. I would say within about a 10-15 minute drive. I did not spend too much time here. It was early that morning and the conditions were less than ideal, but I had the chance to come here so I took it.

How the West Was Won is one of those movies I like parts of it, but not the whole thing. Since it was intended to take advantage of the Cinerama process (note the Wiki link has the same scene seen in the picture below), have an all-star cast, a few directors, a collage of different storylines, and tries to appeal to everyone it just seems to be a bit uneven. Still, it is a movie worth watching.

This is the scene at the very beginning of the movie where Jimmy Stewarts rides up.

It may seem like there was not many people here that morning in the parking lot, but they were around. The camping area is behind me where everyone was either still sleeping or just getting up.

Here Jimmy Stewart is leaving in the canoe.

These areas are close enough for what I was after that morning.

What is really interesting about the Convict Lake area is some of the mountain features, like the ones you see in the background on Laurel Mountain with the gray and brown colored rock, are the some of the oldest rocks in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the surrounding areas go back to Cambrian era rock; we are talking over 400 million years ago.
This is the road you take to get to Convict Lake. Mt. Laurel is on the right and Mt. Morrison is on the left.
Mt. Morrison is one of the most impressive looking mountains as one drives by on HWY 395. It probably won't be any time soon, but I do hope to climb it someday.
Although I shot some video and intended to do something regarding the old west shootout that took place here, I decided I will wait until I go back. So, why the lake is called "Convict Lake" will have to wait.

As a side note, way before my time, my grandparents knew the people that owned the resort at Convict Lake. There was some thought that they may purchase the property at the time, but they decided against it. If that would have happened I think my life would have been way different than it is. They also decided against getting the historic house in Bridgeport that was used in Out of the Past. My grandmother was the one that wanted that one.

The Long Beach Car Show

The July 4th weekend was fun, but pretty wild for me. You are only getting the tail end of the weekend story in this blog, and the rest will probably come out at a later time. This blog entry is one of those that is not as important to me, but I do know that I have people that read here that like this sort of thing so I decided to cover it.

I am sort of the "odd man out" in my extended family. I am not as hardcore into cars as my relatives. Whenever I say, "The use of a car is to get you safely from one area to another," I get a strange look back at me that I totally have no clue what I am talking about. I have attended car shows with people in the past, but I tend not to make a habit of it.

I decided to go to the Long Beach Car Show this year on July 5th. It was a Sunday evening, it was near the beach so I knew it would be cool, and it turned out not having an overwhelming amount of people so it was easy to park and wander around.

I noticed this car right away and it was one that I think ended up getting a major award that night.

There were a bunch of others that were cool looking.

"The Flying Coffin" They had a green one like this called the "Border Patrol." It is one of those things that is only funny if you live in California or some other border state.

I got some really good chicken and excellent cole slaw there. I then listened to a punk band and a rockabilly band. They were alright. The reason I stayed around was to see an old 80's hard rock and blues band Great White. It was probably about 25 years ago I saw them open for another band in Costa Mesa. Back then they were a little more wild and had a lot more hair.

The singer, Jack Russell, had broken his pelvis a few months before so he was not dancing around on stage very much. He ended up singing pretty well though from what I could hear. Stay healthy and clean Jack! The guitarist Mark Kendall seems to be looking right at me above.

I know exactly what part of the song, "Rock me," Michael Lardie was using his harmonica for.

The bassist is new, but the rest of the band including the drummer who you can't see, Audie Desbrow, are the same guys I saw 25 years ago. The band gave a pretty solid performance.

During the last song two young girls got up on stage that I assume were either related to the band members or their associates. They ended up singing the last song with the band and I thought it was kind of cute.

I had a good time. The one thing though is it seemed like I was one of the very few without tattoos at this thing. The "odd man out."

Okay, in the next blog I will get back to what I normally do on here.

Movies This Summer and the Classic Locations

First, I wanted to say if you e-mail me about anything try to mention something in the subject that makes it sound non-spam-like. I get lots of spam that automatically goes into a junk folder if it does not recognize the e-mail. I usually check all the subject lines before I delete what is in the folder. There have been a few times where I almost deleted someones messages as spam before I clicked it. Usually, I can tell just from looking at the e-mail address and subject, but I may not always do that without making mistakes. I always try to respond to whatever I am sent so if you do not hear from me within a few days or so retry.

I wanted to mention that the movies of this summer have some of the classic locations in them, but you have to look or you may miss them. I have to admit I have not seen any movies this summer. It is rare for me to go to the theater anymore. I have mentioned a few of these in the past, but I think I will do it again here. I have heard and read some of these movies aren't that good, but let's not concern ourselves with that right now.

1)Star Trek

I do not know how much of it is used in the movie, but I did see the classic Vasquez Rocks formation in some movie clip many months ago. Of course, it was used in the original tv series, but it looks like they took the rock formation and used CGI to make it look like a lot of them.

2)Up (Shoutout to John for e-mailing me on this one)

It looks like they used a CGI Garden of the Gods from the Iverson Ranch on this one. I looked at a trailer online and saw that from the distance a reversed Garden of the Gods can be seen at one point.

3)Land of the Lost

In the trailers I have seen they used a lot of the Trona Pinnacles. Although I have not done anything on this blog about this place I have relatives that live in nearby Trona and Ridgecrest. I don't think I have been to the Pinnacles in over 25 years. Some day I will go back. Sci-fi movies get made here once in a while.

4)Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The very beginning scene has Lone Pine Peak and the Alabama Hills. I mentioned this back in October.

5)G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

They did shoot some footage from the Lone Pine/Alabama Hills area. I don't think it was a major location for the movie. Whether they use it for the movie and how much is actually in we will find out next month. They were to have shot some footage at the Los Angeles National Cemetery too. Since my recent posting on the cemetery I have been told it has shown up in the tv series Bones too.

Most of the big blockbusters tend to use all parts of the world these days, but it is nice to see some of the classic areas come up once in a while even if they are small parts.

I am going to take some time off of blogging for the next few weeks. See you then.

Tribute to John Wayne #10 (The Shootist Coat)

It is kind of fitting that I started off this tribute in Lone Pine and we are going to end there. John Wayne's career began with movies made here, and he ended here with filming a commercial for Great Western Savings in the Alabama Hills.

This is the coat John Wayne wore while filming The Shootist. It is in the Lone Pine Film Museum.
I remember they had it on display when the museum opened. For some reason I did not take pictures of it. Then when I came back, paid money to get in assuming it was there, they did not have it out for some reason. That was the whole point I went in there for, or I would not have done so. Some items are on loan so I assumed it might have been shipped out. Then during the last festival I saw in in a this display in a different area. So, this is what I took.
Naturally, it is behind a glass case making it hard to take pictures of it without reflections.
One thing to notice is you can see the "bullet holes" and "blood" in the coat in the above and the picture below. I lightened up the picture more that I normally would below so you can see what I mean.
Those holes and fake blood represent the final death of John Wayne on camera. Maybe it is more of a fitting way to remember the actor and the character that he played in The Shootist than his death in the real world.

This has been a fun month doing this tribute to this icon. It was something that I had wanted to do over the past year or two. While I do have other locations with John Wayne, the month is over and will probably show those at a later time. I hoped you enjoyed this tribute.

Tribute to John Wayne #9 (The Shootist at Washoe Lake)

(GPS: N39 14.320 W119 46.160)

As I have said before, sometimes when I go location hunting I am not always trying to find exact spots. Sometimes I just enjoy getting the general feel of the area. This is one of those that I kind of knew before going there that I was not going to find exact camera spots.

Washoe Lake State Park is not that far from Carson City, NV. After I visited the place in the last blog I continued on to this Lake which was about a 15-20 minute drive away.

In The Shootist, this is the scene where John Wayne and Lauren Bacall take a ride out to this lake.

Okay, in my picture they were not exactly here, but at least I got the horizon correct if you compare the mountains/hills in the background. One thing to note is the water level was probably down a lot than usual mainly because of the dry year(s) we have been having.
I have not looked to see what this mountain is. Most of the high mountains in Nevada are not as high as the ones in the Eastern Sierra. Still, it was one I am curious in.
My picture looking across the lake.
Zoom in. There are some antennas up there.
This is when they were leaving.
You can see where the ridgeline goes down.
So, I was close by, but it looks like so much has changed in the last 30 years that this is the closest I was able to get.

It was warm so once I got some pictures taken I took off. I was content with what I got, but I probably will not come back here. There was an interesting looking trail on behind me from this lake on the other side of the road, but it is a low priority on my list of hikes right now.

Tribute to John Wayne #8 (The Shootist at the Krebs-Peterson House)

One of the rules I have on here is, under normal circumstances, I do not like to share areas that are privately owned. There are bunch of places I know of or been to that I would love to share, but I do not blog about them for this reason. Most of the fun I really have on my adventures is being out in the middle of nowhere with no worries of the sensitivities of the big city.

This is an exception. The reason I am allowing this one is that it is a well known historic place in Carson City, Nevada. It is on part of an official tour of mansions known as the "Kit Carson Trail" which is a tribute to the towns namesake. I am not going to list GPS coordinates for it, but there is a map on the official site that leads you right to it. Still, please be respectful when you go there. They have a radio broadcast you can listen to as you drive by. In fact, a John Wayne impersonator talks about the history of the house. Let me link the podcast here (right click and open in your browser) and you can listen to it as you look at my pictures.

The Shootist is probably my favorite John Wayne movie. In someways I feel like I am watching a tv movie they way it was done, but I like the story. Some of the inspiration for the original book was based on the end of the life of John Wesley Hardin, and if you have read this blog in the past you know he is the old west personality that I have spent the most time reading about. The importance of this movie is that it is the last movie John Wayne did. His character, J.B. Books, is dying of cancer like Wayne was. It was a nice movie to end his career on.

Here John Wayne is meeting up with Ron Howard in front of the Kreb-Peterson House.
Normally, I do not like to show really bad shady pictures like your going to get here. Trees are not the best things to reference compared to rock formations. Usually, trees die and are replaced over short periods of time. It turns out the three trees out in front are the same trees from the movie. The area is not as open, but the way the trees branch out from the base is the same.
Seeing how there is more tree coverage in the area there is a lot of shade. Since my time was limited the morning I did this I had to settle for less than ideal lighting conditions.

In the story, Wayne lives at this place and Lauren Bacall plays the owner and the mother of Ron Howard.

Most of it is the same now. The extended patio area looks like it was taken down. OH! See that little tree in the first picture that Wayne is riding towards? It looks like it has grown up!

One final thing is I do believe they did use the insides of this place to film the movie. What is odd is while facing the front here all you have to do is turn to your right and move a couple of homes down and you find the Nevada Govenor's Mansion. Here its podcast (right click and open in your browser).

I wanted to list one more of these mansions here. This is on the official register of Nevada's historical places. This is the Rinckel Mansion. You can listen to its podcast here.

There are a bunch of really nice places here. It is quite impressive to drive by them and check them out if you are not gambling your money away.

Tribute to John Wayne #7 (True Grit at Hot Creek Continued)

As I have been saying over and over in the past few blogs, there is enough to know you are in the right area here, but when you really examine things a lot has changed. From the last blog, I walked up a little higher to see if I could see how the small home could have been climbed onto.
Okay.

So, just movie to right a bit should get us to where he climbed up on the top of the small home.

This is what I got out doing that.

A lot appears to be going on here. Erosion and other geological issues are probably an issue here. I kind of think there has been some man made work done here too. You can see there is a sign at the bottom that fell over. From what I can tell that dark looking rock on the far left does seem to be one that was here from the filming, but all the rest do not seem right. You can compare the other side of the river with the movie picture if you want.

Having Grit at Hot Creek (Youtube Version)

For the video I used the following music from Incompetech:  Americana, Crusade, and In the West.