Bristlecone Heaven

Well this morning I went to take pictures of the bristle cone trees. There are 2 locations one is 45 min from Lone Pine and the other is 12 miles further, on a bumpy road with no cement and lots of rocks. The road from Lone Pine is paved all the way to the nearer patch of bristle cone which is the Schullman patch. My spelling may be way off, so if you don't see them on the map. it's probably because I misspelled it. Back to my trip report- I arrived at the junction where thecemented road ends at around 7:15 am in the morning and I decided to go to the dirt road bristle cone first. Oh my god, what a road, if you want to call it that. I never saw my van jump so much, I was actually popping wheelies. I had to go pretty slow. I think I was averaging about 7 to 9 miles per hour. I had to go 12 miles on this road, do the math, it took me one and a half hours to drive 12 miles. But let me tell you, it was totally worth it. The trees there were awesome. Did I mention that this site is at 11,000 feet. You got it, I could look down the hill edges and see clouds if there were any. Unfortunately there were none, but nevertheless it was breath taking and I do mean breath taking. Carrying my camera equipment, I was constantly stopping to get my breath. I can't believe how out of shape I am, well maybe I can. I had so much fun up there. There was no one else there, I guess some people know better than to take that road. At one point I was running around with one camera in my hand going from one tree to another. I felt like the Von Trapp family in the Sound of Music. I am so glad that i actually went there. An other photographer did show up and I asked him to take a picture of me. I was euphoric on the drive back. It actually took me a a little more than a half hour to get back. My van was rocking and popping and swaying and that didn't bother me. I'll have to assess the damages to the van when I get home, but for now I enjoyed the moment

Once I got to the cemented portion of the road I went and checked out the other site to see what kind of bristle cone trees they had. They were nice but could not compare to the ones I saw earlier. I did take some pictures just so they wouldn't feel bad. I hope to get more pictures here later but for now I'll include my picture of me and one of the bristle cone trees.