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Diaz Lake campground near Lone Pine. This was an interesting county park in that there were not well-defined campsites. We had reservations but, when we arrived, there was no staff at the park. We drove around the campground and noticed sheets of paper tacked to trees and posts. We found our reservation form tacked to a huge cottonwood tree. It was a pretty laid back place, for sure.

We loved finding a secluded spot each afternoon and watching the sunset over the Sierras. Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the contiguous U.S., towers several thousand feet above the Alabama Hills.

In 1942, the United States government ordered more than 110,000 men, women, and children to leave their homes and detained them in remote, military-style camps. Manzanar War Relocation Center, near Lone Pine, was one of ten camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II. Two such camps were in Arkansas at Jerome and Roher. Most of the buildings at Manzanar were torn down after the war but the gym/auditorium still stands. It serves as the visitor center. It's hard to believe that this happened to U.S. citizens just because of their heritage. But war makes people do strange things, I guess.

The Alabama Hills are a popular location for television and movie productions (especially Westerns) set in an archetypical "rugged" environment. Since the early 1920s, 150 movies and about a dozen television series have been filmed here, including Tom Mix films, Hopalong Cassidy films, The Gene Autry Show and The Lone Ranger. Classics such as Gunga Din, Springfield Rifle and How the West Was Won as well as more recent productions such as Tremors and Joshua Tree were filmed at sites known as Movie Flats and Movie Flat Road. In Gladiator, actor Russell Crowe rides a horse in front of the Alabamas, with Mount Whitney in the background, for a scene presumably set in Spain.

Pearl, our truck, in front of Gene Autry Rock. This rock is seen in many of Gene's films and, often he is sitting atop Champion, his beloved horse. If you would like to watch some clips from Gene's films that feature this rock, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uat8M2uoRwI.