October 21 -- Looking For Basque Aspen Carvings, and Fall Colors Are Hangin' In...

I've been living in "Discovery", my 2011 Lance 1685 20-foot travel trailer, since May 2013, and because I only have about 16 feet of "living space" you can imagine most of my daylight hours are spent outside. Since having come to the Owens Valley town of Bishop in early September (and a brief stay at the RV park in Lee Vining) I've spent most of my time driving along the eastern Sierra Nevada, ranging from Big Pine in the south to Bridgeport in the north, photographing the spectacular autumn colors of aspen, cottonwood, willow -- and even rabbitbrush in the high desert, which has its own, bright-yellow beauty. I've volunteered to be a "color spotter" for the website California Fall Color (click on the link to get to the webpage) so folks will know where to go here in the eastern Sierra, and when. It's been a bit of an unusual season; it started out slow, then the weather turned warmer than normal so the colors lasted longer. Here it is, October 22, and "Go Now!" , at- and past-peak colors of yellow, orange and red are still blazing on the mountainsides and in the canyons. Here are a few "eye-candy" scenes from the 21st --

Aspen Stands On Hwy 395 Across From Mono Lake

Lundy Canyon and Lake

In Lundy Canyon

Fire-red Aspen north of Conway Summit

Lee Vining Canyon, off Tioga Pass Road

Along Lee Vining Creek Road

Glorious Mix of Aspen on June Lake Loop

At Rush Creek on June Lake Loop looking toward Carson Peak

But I was on a mission to find Basque aspen carvings today...An online friend gave me the coordinates of a road north of the town of Bridgeport that, when you drive up the canyon, there are aspen that have carvings made by Basque shepherds when the area was grazed by flocks of sheep. So on the way up there... 

Clouds!  Looking north towards the Sweetwater Mtns

The canyon was full of at- and past-peak aspen -- 

and lots of signs saying "Private Property -- No Trespassing!" You really couldn't leave the dirt road without crossing into someone's "property". There were about 5 houses along the road, fairly substantial for being so isolated, and some had solar panels. The road eventually became one with the creek, so I parked Tundra and took off on foot...

The "road" turned into a track, then ended up in a meadow at the base of the mountains. You can easily imagine sheep being grazed here -- 

But the Basque carvings...Well, most of them were of fairly recent vintage -- the 1960s thru 2000 -- and were mostly just names, and some weren't even Basque, one was from Peru...And there weren't many "pictures", except for quite a few, well, penises! Seems like the male shepherds were a pretty horny lot... But there were a few Spanish "inscriptions", which I translated using Google -- 

Quien Madruga  Dios Ayuda -- God Help The Early Bird

Hmm...Not Quite Sure of the Meaning

1964, the earliest I was able to find

It was all fascinating, rather like a treasure hunt. And then there were the canyon colors and landscapes -- 

Taken with the Canon 100-400 f/5.6 IS L lens

There are many spots such as this, tucked away up a canyon, where all you have to do is look and find a piece of its history, whether it be sheep grazing or mining...More eastern Sierra adventures to come.