Our stay at the BLM site was short, but enjoyable. We had an interesting first test run. The morning of our departure, we hooked up the 5th wheel, buckled in the screaming kitties and hit the road at a whopping 5mph. 

Leaving the site was even worse than entering it. We had to take a different direction to head towards our next destination, which meant traveling along the washboard dirt road for 5 miles! The drive along this section took us over a half an hour and by the time we made it to the end even Ryan and I were screaming along with the cats. We had had enough!

On the bright side, we saw a jack rabbit hopping its way down the road… it was moving along much faster than we were!

On the downside, Leah had a large accident in her sleepy pod carrier at some point during the trip, which we somehow didn’t notice until we made it to our next destination. We assumed it happened at the beginning of the trip because she was quite upset with the dirt road and the bumps likely shook her bladder a bit too much, but we drove for about 5 hours that day so I’m not sure how we didn’t notice the smell…

Once we arrived at the next location and set up the camper so that the landing gear was down and the slides were out, we brought the cats inside and let them out of their carriers. This is when I noticed that she had her accident. I quickly grabbed Leah before she could go hopping around in our bed (that’s always the first place she goes when we let her out) and I locked her in the bathroom. 

We had to wait until the water tank was filled to clean her up so she had to sit in there for a bit while we finished with our setup.

While the tank was filling, I started cleaning her sleepypod carrier. These carriers are awesome because the inner lining is attached by a zipper so when it needs cleaning, we can easily detach it and throw it in the wash rather than attempt to clean it by hand. Such a convenient style!

Once the water tank was filled, Ryan and I grabbed all the necessary tools and we locked ourselves in the bathroom with Leah. She is our special kitty who has had many bathroom difficulties throughout the years so we are used to cleaning her up.

She made quite the mess this time, though. She must have had a pretty full bladder because she managed to completely cover herself and her carrier in urine. We felt horrible that she had to lay in it for however long during the drive. If we had known, we would have found a good place to stop to clean her up.

The cleanup job took a good amount of time. We bathed her in a bucket of warm water mixed with a touch of apple cider vinegar but even with the bath, we had to cut a bunch of fur off her butt. It’s safe to say she was squirmy and often whined throughout this process, but considering we had to dump her butt into a tub of water I would say overall she did a pretty good job letting us do what needed to be done. 

Once she was cleaned up, she was set free to roam about the house and check out the new outdoor surroundings!

The destination we had just arrived at was Lone Pine, CA.

We stayed at Boulder Creek RV Resort, which was a wonderful experience! We would definitely love to return to this area. We were so happy that we decided to stay here for a week during Christmas!

The campground was really empty. There were just a handful of other campers around and we were spread out so it was nice to have a little extra space, but the best part of the campground was the scenery.

We were surrounded by the beautiful cascading mountain ranges. On one side, there were green Sequoia trees covered by snow and on the other side, brown desert-like mountains from Death Valley.

Lone Pine is a unique location as it is an extremely small town with a classic western vibe. Ryan was expecting a sheriff to come riding down the road on a horse to tell us that the town wasn’t big enough for the both of us! LOL

We absolutely LOVED this area and hope that we can return to it soon! 

As I mentioned, we had Death Valley (DV) on one side with Sequoia National Park (SNP) on the other side, but what was even more amazing about this town is that just a 5 minute drive from the campground was the Alabama Hills.

We originally went to this location because we wanted to go to DV and SNP, but we wanted to cut down on hauling the cats and camper around so we tried to find a place halfway between both parks with a plan to drive to each when we wanted to go hiking. Finding a campground halfway was a bit difficult because of the lack of options plus we wanted to make sure we didn’t go to an area that was snowy. We didn’t have tire chains for the truck or camper so we had to alter our plan for driving to avoid inclement weather locations.

Lone Pine ended up being much closer to SNP. Death Valley was about a 2 hour drive but we didn’t mind. We’re used to driving at this point and we use those long drives as a chance to sightsee. 

Because we were based closer to SNP, we assumed we would do more hiking in that area, but we had a harder go of it than we expected. Most of the trails were already covered in snow so we were limited on our choices for hiking. When we realized this, we were a bit disappointed, thinking we should have researched the area more because now we are are stuck here for a week with very little hiking options.

Turns out, it didn’t matter. A local told us about Alabama Hills and once we checked it out, we fell in love!

Because of this, we actually spent most of our time exploring this area more than the larger national parks we originally set out to see.

We had so much fun there! We learned that Alabama Hills is a famous location for filming movies and car commercials and we can see why! It is a huge piece of fairly flat land surrounded by giant rock formations. It looks almost desert-like as everything is covered in dirt. This is why high speed car chases are so commonly filmed in this area. The dirt flying up creates a dramatic flare.

Obviously, while we were here we filmed our own commercial! How could we not?!

We had so much fun driving around here! I think it’s the most fun we’ve had driving our truck around and it gave us a better understanding of what our truck can handle. 

Because this is a popular filming location, the road that travels through this land is rightfully named Movie Road. The dirt road takes you throughout the large area of land, allowing you to explore the rock formations. We saw a bunch of people boondocking out there and we definitely plan to return here to do the same. It looks like an awesome BLM location!

Partway through the drive, we hopped out of the truck and roamed around, jumping from rock formation to rock formation. It was fun climbing around, just feeling free. 

After a while, we got back in our truck and continued down the road. We somehow ended up making a wrong turn, taking a different road away from Movie Rd, one that traveled even further into the BLM land away from where most people ventured.

We were out in the middle of this land with no one around, driving along a very untraveled road. It seemed as though it was meant more for ATVs so we weren’t sure how our truck would handle it and considered turning around, but we were having too much fun and were curious as to how the truck would make out with this adventure.

Since the cats were comfortably resting in the 5th wheel that we left at the campground, we were able to speed along this road without worrying about how much bouncing we were doing. Our truck handled it great and Ryan and I certainly enjoyed ourselves!

It was the first time in quite a while that Ryan had driven. I had been doing most of the driving so it was nice to switch it up. He drove as I stood up halfway out the sunroof, relishing in the wind blowing feeling free as a bird. 

Up to this point of our travels, this was probably the most fun we had had along our journey. Before we left, we made sure to return to enjoy the area a bit more!