4 Day High Desert Trip - Ojai to Alabama Hills *Very Pic Heavy*

inv3ctiv3

Adventurist
High Desert Trip May 2017


My gf was heading out of town for a bachelorette party for a few days so I took off to do some camping and had a few friends come a long for a bit, one of the most fun trips I've done in a long time! Started off by leaving SB around noon on Friday towards Ojai where we were gonna camp for the night in a campground we all like but first we had to hit a secret swim spot.

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That FWC may look familiar cause one of my friends bought it from @Overlanerd

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As you can see my on board water set up now has the connections in the rear wheel well:

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It was cool getting all of our trucks together and comparing the different set ups:

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After a night of just hanging around the fire we did a nice hike up to one of the peaks near by then parted ways cause they had stuff to do, from there I headed up the 395 solo and hit a bunch of off shoots and dirt roads I'd always wanted to go up.

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I got into Alabama Hills kinda late cause I spent so much time exploring off the 395 but because I had no schedule and no one else with me I just found some spot right off movie road which was pretty cool, kinda packed in with people for me but I met a cool guy who wanted to know everything about my truck so we chatted for a while:

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It was my friends Bday the next day so her BF and her left LA to meet me in Lone Pine late in the afternoon so I spent the whole next morning/afternoon just going around every 4WD road I could find and marking cool camp spots and roads in the valley to get away from all the people around Movie Rd.

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Moon rocks

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Spent a lot of the day photographing snakes and lizards....Long-nosed Leopard Lizard:

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Yellow-backed Spiny Lizard:

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Western Zebra-tailed Lizard:

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Desert Horned Lizard:

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This was really sad to find, this was the first Panamint Rattlesnake I'd ever found and it had just been ran over by some dumbass but what was interesting was this Long-nosed Leopard Lizard was found just a few feet from the rattlesnake with no obvious injuries from being ran over leading me to think it had been bit by the snake and was about to get eaten when the snake got ran over.....

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Look one way and you see this:

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Look behind you and you see this:

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I headed back towards town to meet up with my friends since they were in her Audi and I needed to show them to where I had picked out to camp which couldn't be too far in due to her car.....

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After picking them up and dropping their car off at our spot we loaded up into the truck so I could show them all around as they'd never been there:

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We came across this beautiful Great Basin Gopher Snake crossing the road so I moved her to safety:

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Now if there is one thing I can do when taking new people out is showing them how important the local wildlife is and my friend was terrified of snakes, he wouldn't even get out of the truck when I went to move her off the road so I slung her around my neck to show him that it was not aggressive nor was it going to bite him and he actually got out and interacted with the snake which was awesome:

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My friend caught me laughing at his reaction when he saw me put it around my neck, he lost it haha

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We also found a Mohave Patch-nosed Snake just laying on the trail so I got out and moved it off as well

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So after all that we decided to retire back to camp and cook dinner and watch the stars, thanks for looking!

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Very cool, thanks for sharing. Deduct cool points for having a built truck in the desert with a car on low profile tires in the background!:cool:

I grew up in Lompoc, Ca. My sister is 8 years younger than I am and was always a bit of a tomboy. She was maybe 8-9 years old, she found a horny toad in the woods around our neighborhood, caught it, and decided that her pocket would be a good place for it. She forgot about it, pants went in the laundry...Mom found it when checking pockets before clothes went in the washer. I was in the driveway across the street from my house, I heard the scream and went running to see what the hell was going on. To this day my Mom fails to see any humor in that story!
 
Very cool, thanks for sharing. Deduct cool points for having a built truck in the desert with a car on low profile tires in the background!:cool:

I grew up in Lompoc, Ca. My sister is 8 years younger than I am and was always a bit of a tomboy. She was maybe 8-9 years old, she found a horny toad in the woods around our neighborhood, caught it, and decided that her pocket would be a good place for it. She forgot about it, pants went in the laundry...Mom found it when checking pockets before clothes went in the washer. I was in the driveway across the street from my house, I heard the scream and went running to see what the hell was going on. To this day my Mom fails to see any humor in that story!

Yea that's why we had that spot cause I had two friends come along since it was her bday, still a great dispersed spot. And I'm from Santa Barbara so I know Lompoc well and that's really unfortunate for the horned lizard as it had to of been a blainsville horned lizard which is a state protected lizard!

Great write up and photos.

X2, Thanks for sharing with us! :cool:

Thanks guys!
 
Very nice trip report. Well told and great pics to boot! Thanks for taking the time to share your adventure with us.
 
Looks like was a good time!... Excellent job with the pictures and thanks for sharing with us!

One of my favorite places in California. Thanks for sharing!

Very nice trip report. Well told and great pics to boot! Thanks for taking the time to share your adventure with us.

Great pictures! Looks like an aweome area to check out........

Great pics thanks for sharing. Love the herp shots!

Thanks everyone! Alabama Hills is pretty incredible, it can be really crowded at times but you just gotta get out of the center of it or off movie rd.
 
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