It’s memorial weekend and I wanted to do one more overnight trip on my bike before my leave starts and I head off on tour. I actually didn’t want to do memorial weekend, but last weekend I came down with something, and even this weekend is touch and go with the remnants of a sore throat.

Sonora Pass opened last weekend which is always fun to drive over. I packed everything up to split the driving in two, Friday night head over the mountains and camp on the east side, Saturday morning get up bright and early and drive the rest of the way. The night drive was pretty stunning, the sunset illuminating the clouds, and as I got into the mountains a pretty full moon lit up the snowy peaks. Unfortunately the moon then proceeded to light up my car while I was trying to sleep, but the temperature dropped down below freezing so I buried my head in my sleeping bag anyway.

Saturday morning was a shorter drive down 395 to Independence. I had breakfast after turning the pedals a few times. I still felt hit or miss about just bailing, it’s hard to tell if my throat was scratching due to the arid desert air or I was still recovering. I’m pretty sure it was a bit of both, but probably more the later.

The first section of the route rides uphill, the road turns from asphalt to unpaved, sand, turning south and descending to Manzanar, which was the site of one of the Japanese concentration camps in the US during World War 2. From Manzanar the route continues south through the Alabama Hills, some interesting geological hills which have featured in many movies.

I really enjoyed doing the auto tour of Manzanar on my bicycle, I’ve wanted to visit this site and it was fascinating to see. Mostly all that remains is a grid system with some concrete foundation slabs, almost none of the original buildings survived. There’s a monument to those that died at the camp placed at the original site of the burials, which is perfectly framed by the mountains.

At the start I thought maybe I would be able to handle the sand, for the most part the road was solid enough I didn’t have any issues, but as the day wore on the sand, combined with the lack of shade, and probably not drinking enough, really started to sap the fun out of the day. Sections were getting increasingly soft which meant I had to push my bike through them. By the time I got to Alabama Hills I really had little left in the tank to take them in. It really didn’t help the huge number of memorial day holiday makers out and about, spewing dust as they drove past and illegally camping all over because there were a lot more visitors than campsites.

I drove through and past Alabama Hills, I’ll have to come back and poke around when there are fewer people and I have more time. I coasted down Whitney Portal Road, which has been closed due to a massive washout last year. The road surface was completely destroyed for a long section, which was totally impassable to cars, but easy to push a bicycle past. I found a place to bed in for the night, and watched as the setting sun turned the white mountains orange.