Mono Pass (Yosemite) Part 3

(GPS: N37 51.300 W119 12.465)

We got back on the trail and looked back at Summit Lake.

The goal now is just too see Mono Lake from up here. It is not too much further after you reach Mono Pass. We are talking maybe a 5-10 minute hike after Summit Lake. Follow this trail for a few minutes.
This is one of the lakes you see. This is Upper Sardine Lake.
Looking toward the east you can see Mono Lake. Coincidentally, you can see some of the South Tufa and where "Lago" was in High Plains Drifter.
The trail descends down here into Bloody Canyon. If you look closely you might see another lake which should be Lower Sardine Lake.
If you look toward the north you see Mt. Gibbs. Mt. Gibbs is a peak that is easy to climb, but not a high priority on my list. Nearby Dana is more interesting too me. Funny thing though, in a mathematics 3rd grade text book there is a math problem that lists a bunch of Yosemite mountains (Dana, Matterhorn, Hoffman, and Gibbs) by elevation and it turns out that Mt. Gibbs was the answer to the math problem.
A couple of historical notes about this area:

1)I mentioned that the Native Americans used this trail for centuries, but it is thought that the first time Mono Lake was encountered by Euro-Americans was when Lt. Tredwell Moore and his scouts were pursuing members of Chief Tenaya's Miwok tribe down this canyon. The tribe members were supposed to be responsible for the killing of three prospectors in Yosemite. In any case, the above views are what they would have had looking down the canyon and seeing Mono Lake. From then on the area was the main trail for coming and going from the east into the Yosemite region until Tioga Pass came about. Most books about Yosemite or this area talk about this, but here are two other links to look over:

Prospectors & Pioneers (Official Mono Lake Site)

Yosemite Nature Notes (1978)

2)No one really knows why they call the canyon below "Bloody Canyon." One story is that in taking up mules or horses up and down the trail the rocky steepness caused the animals to bleed a lot. Then you could see all the blood on the rocks. Some of these animals died here too.

3)This is just a fun folklore tidbit that I and others have found funny in the past. In the book Mono Diggings by Frank Wedertz he mentions someone called "The Wildman of Bloody Canyon." Supposedly, this man in 1882 and in 1883 showed up in Bodie heavily armed and with a fistful of dollars. He rarely spoke and was sort of a mystery man. It was later revealed in the newspaper that he was Tom Fitzsimmons. He had come to Bodie to work as a miner, but left after his sister died in 1869 and became a hermit in Bloody Canyon. He wore a bearskin (from a bear he supposedly had killed), had buckskin pants, and a fur hat. Wedertz wrote that the Bad Men of Bodie were frightened of this individual and left him alone. I always get a kick out of a historical guy like this knowing Clint Eastwood's film was made nearby; Also, a lot of westerns have used the image of a guy going into town and everyone watching from behind their windows or from a safe distance.

The video:

Mono Pass (Youtube Version)

One thing I did not mention is that after this hike we drove to eat. I was happy I had gotten the new video footage. I tried using the video camera again, and my flashcard came up as an error! I could not access my card! I was seriously demoralized. I regrouped by getting a new card, but left my card with the Mono Pass hike alone. I had hoped that when I got home there would be something online that would recover at least some of it. I had to wait a week and when I got home was able to recover most of the card. There were some defects in the video. So, the videos you see of this hike were the best I could do with what remained. There were some things left out that were lost, but what you see pretty much represented what happened. This was one of the many epic problems I had during my visit in August.

Mono Pass (Yosemite) Part 2

(GPS: N37 51.020 W119 13.025)

Everything was silent until we came to Mono Pass. There, the winds started to pick up around me. We spent a few minutes at the lake. Looking back, I could see some clouds there were mixed with the smoke from Yosemite Valley. How long would it be until more and more smoke would come and it would be a waste of time to take pictures?

In the previous blog I pointed out a trail you take by the pond that takes you to the historic miner cabins on the other side. We reached the area near the cabins. Summit Lake was still in the distance where we had just been.
There are a few remains of cabins on the way to Mono Pass, but here you find about 5-6 cabins that are still standing.
This is the main cabin that still has the roof on top.
I went in. On the other side connected to this appears to be the remains of a stable for mules or horses. I am not exactly sure what they did here. Maybe a way to keep warm here?
Looking back outside.
The roof. This are at the pass must be really cold during the winters, but I guess miners, mountain men, and Native Americans got used to it.

A funky looking tree behind one of the cabin remains.

I will wrap this up in the next blog and show the final video as well.

Mono Pass (Yosemite) Part 1

(GPS: N37 51.335 w119 12.995)

This is a hike I had previously had done about five years ago. I wanted to go back for higher quality pictures and video. I had mentioned a few blogs entries back that Yosemite was on fire most of the time I was there. Our strategy was to go early before the smoke would hit in the afternoon. That actually worked out that day, but another of the many issues we had happened to me a few days earlier. While doing some lifting I injured the lower part of my back. I could not walk around at all, and I thought I would not be able to do anymore hikes this year. Fortunately, I recovered quickly, but wore a back brace during this hike and did feel some pain as I was doing it. I will post the video links to the first part of the hike at the end of this blog.

What I like about this hike is it does have a lot of history to it. You will see more as I go along in the next two blog entries. For the moment let me just say that this trail goes along a historical Native American trail that has been used for centuries. There are a bunch of signs at the beginning that go over the natural history, wildlife, and people history of this trail.

There are two areas people refer to as Mono Pass. I will show the other one at a later date. This one is on the eastern side of Yosemite and only a few miles from the eastern entrance. The hike itself is about four miles one way with about 1,000 ft. of elevation gain. I consider it a "tourist hike" in that it is not really that demanding, the trail is well maintained, and you will probably encounter other people at some point on the hike. It is a common Yosemite tourist hike. It is one of those hikes I feel is scenic, but never really feel that I am way out in the backcountry.
The picture above should be Dana Fork. This is the only major stream/river you encounter on this hike. Most of the hike is following a trail back and forth through the forest. You do get some points where the trees open up for you on one side or the other, but for about half of the hike trees are on both sides of you.
This is the crucial part of the hike. There is no chance of getting lost out here because of the signs, but all you do is stay left anytime you see the trail split or go off in another direction. The right side takes you to Spillway Lake which I have never been to. At this point is where just about all the elevation takes place. Most of the trail to this point is level, but now you have to put some real work into your legs. Since my back was still in pain I did not really go that fast on this hike so my pace was slow on level or higher elevation portions of the trail.
There comes a point when you are about 75% of the way done that the area starts to open up. When we were here five years ago my brother saw an army of mule deer out in the field there. I only saw two out there this time.
If you can imagine heading south on a map and then finally turning east that pretty much describes what is going on here. The trail goes by the base of this mountain here which was on my left side. I liked that tree there. Then below looking toward the right (west) there is a big pond. You might see a faint trail that leads you down below. That will be in the next blog.
Finally, after about 1 1/2 to 2 hours you get to the sign marking Mono Pass and the entrance to Bloody Canyon. This is another Yosemite border that enters Ansel Adams Wilderness. You will notice the lake in the background. They call it Summit Lake, but keep in mind that some of these lakes are just big ponds. It is beautiful to look at no matter what you want to call it.
This ends the first part. There are a bunch of things I left out so you may want to check out the video:

Mono Pass (Youtube Version

Next time you get to see the historical cabins built by the miners.

My Decision on Where to put the HD Videos

I have said this before, but for those that are new to the blog I will explain again. When I originally started this blog I wanted to have not only pictures, but video as well. The idea was that rather than me upload pictures and videos separately to different friends and relatives by e-mail over time I would just put them here. Then it is just a case of sending them a link and then coming here to view.

I never did, and still don't, really try to promote myself on here to create traffic, but over the years more people that have shared some of my interests have come here. Which is fun and I have met a lot of new people online this way. It is really cool that I have other people around the world come on here to see what I have been up to. My approach is the people that really care about the areas and interests I have will find me somehow so I have never really been too concerned about constantly advertising my links all over the web. A lot of my stuff is just a google search away anyways.

I started out with youtube and I wasn't sure how serious I would be about uploading videos to that site. Eventually, I figured out some of the tricks and started using it a lot more in support of this blog. I have expressed my disappointment with youtube in the past on here. They have certainly changed over the past few years, so my old ways of doing things just do not really work on that site anymore. I could start to see the light at the end of the tunnel with the way they were going and had pretty much gotten to the point where I said it was time for me to stop. At that point I was seriously sick of youtube.

I have allowed some months to go by and to how I feel about this. I purchased a new video camera a few months back to start doing new HD videos. The question then was where do I want to put up the new stuff, that is, if I want to even do that anymore.

I don't want to put them up on the old thgreatsilence channel. It was good for the time, but really I want to start over fresh. I have decided to put up videos on two sites:

OverwhelmingSilence (Youtube)

I still do not like everything about youtube. However, they have made some good improvements on the HD side of things. My style of doing things will probably be different though than the old channel.

If I see other sites in the future I might try those too. However, the above two will be the sites I refer to in this blog in my posts. Under normal circumstance I will be either posting the same video or something very close to the same video on both sites. As far as my old youtube channel goes all I can say is what I have been saying over the past few months: I intend to keep it up as is as long as I can. I do have about 100 subscribers on there so I would like to keep it up, but we will see. Although, for all practical purposes I am done with that channel, I might upload a few older footage videos in the next few months and let my subscribers know I am doing my thing elsewhere now.

In the next day or two I will start using these sites to talk about my Mono Pass (Yosemite) hike.

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.