4 - FOSSIL FALLS, RANDSBURG AND JEEPING JAWBONE CANYON

We have driven Hwy 395 many times over the years and sailed right past a small sign south of Lone Pine pointing to Fossil Falls. 


This trip we turned down the gravel road to the parking lot. We were surprised to see lots of cars already there ahead of us. 


Having found info on this place on the web, it warned that you should be wearing good solid shoes because of the rockiness of the path. In other words, forget the flip flops. 


This is good advice because you are picking your way for a quarter mile through a lava field. There was a "path" of sorts, filled with rocks and at times hard to find.


Don warned me to keep my eyes on my feet and not sight see because he knows what a klutz I am and landing on those sharp rocks would not have been a good thing.

 As we got near the edge of the falls, there were holes in the rock surface filled with rain water.


Due to my research, we knew that there was no longer water going over the falls. At one time the Owens River cascaded over these rocks but that ended many years ago

The sun shone over the Sierra mountains in the distance and on to huge black boulders.

 It is hard to get a good perspective on how deep this crevasse really is and I wasn't going to get too close to the edge. There were a lot of people there and none of them looked like they would have been willing to crawl down there after me should I fall.

 These boulders were larger than the size of a car.

As we headed back toward the parking lot, there was a huge mound of black "gravel" with the mountains in the distance. Here we are walking the hard-to-see path through chunks of lava rock. This was one of the easier parts of the path.

When we returned to the car we followed signs to the Little Lake Overlook. It was about a five mile 4-wheel drive road. When we finally arrived at the overlook, we were surprised at how high we had climbed.  We were several hundred feet above the lake level. You can actually see Hwy 395 from here. It is the straight gray line in the distance.


When we are in this area we always make a trip over to Randsburg, considered a living ghost town as there are still some people who live here. I have no idea why. It is an old gold mining town full of rusty...well, about everything you can think of is rusty.

There are several store fronts on Main Street, but very few actually have business in them. Like this one, it is rusty corrugated metal and the concrete steps are no longer really usable. Of course there is a working bar across the street. Somehow those always survive.

The main business in town is the General Store with the 100 year old soda fountain. We always come here for what we have always described as "the world's best chocolate malts."  This place is always busy with motorcyclists and off-roaders, for one reason, it is the only place around to get food. 


Well this is our last visit here. How can you ruin a chocolate malt? I have no idea, but they did, BIG TIME!! We had both ordered one and they tasted burnt. That's right, BURNT! 


I thought maybe they were using hot fudge to make them and it had gotten too hot and scorched the chocolate. We finally asked, telling them it tasted burnt. No, it was just plain Hershey's chocolate syrup. Whatever, we were not able to eat them so wrote them off as, "Well, maybe you can't go back after all."

Next we explored Jawbone Canyon. It was another sign we had driven past for years, not even slowing down. 


This time we talked to the ranger there who gave us a "map" (loosely speaking) and told us a drive through the canyon would take about three hours. I was amazed at the beauty we saw there. Not at all what I expected.

 This is called Blue Point due to the particles of copper found in the rock there.

 I thought driving the desert would just be sage brush and sand but this Jeep road took us to see vistas both high and low. 

 Some areas had lots of Joshua trees, others none. Note the deep sand roadway. 

At times we could look across the hills and see snowy mountain tops in the distance.

I'm always amazed at how big boulders cling to the sides of mountains, not falling any further than the very edge of the rock this big round one is perched on.

 I loved to see the varieties in the color of the mountains in the distance.

 It is a little hard to tell, but we are high up on a very narrow road circling the edge of a mountain. This view is pretty much straight down to a deep valley. 


I commented to Don that I was glad it was a one-way road (as indicated on the "map." He replied that he was just hoping everyone else knew it was one-way. There was no place to turn around and backing up on such a narrow road and on the edge of a mountain would have been more than scary.


We were following the numbered signs as indicated on the "map" until the signs for the one we were supposed to be on...just stopped and we eventually found we were on a different one. 


At this point we were faced with motorcyclists and ATV's flying in our direction. Thankfully the road was wider at this point so we could let them pass. The danger is not seeing them in time or vice-a-versa.

Eventually we safely found our way back while having a great trip that we would have never expected.


Next blog is Needles, California. More than you would expect.