Eastern Sierra Road Trip
A fact about us: we have the biggest travel bug.
If we could spend everyday on the road exploring new places, we probably would. We love road tripping and being outdoors and seeing the world together. We spent the last few months of 2020 equally working hard. We were in desperate need of a break and a week together, so we immediately wondered where we could travel. The idea for Christmas in the Eastern Sierra was born!
Neither of us had ever spent any time in a number of places we visited, so we made it a mission to check them all off! We packed our cameras and every jacket we owned into the back of the Jeep and set off on the road east! Here is a rundown of where we went and what we did.
Death Valley National Park
We’d heard about a million good things about Death Valley, but had never gotten the chance to visit. This became our first destination. We arrived at about 1 in the afternoon, so we unfortunately didn’t have too much time to explore before we lost light (so if you’re reading this and want to elope here or run around with us for a day, we are so down to keep exploring every corner of this gorgeous place!!).
We had a plan of catching last light and stargazing from the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, so we decided to stay on the southern end of the park where more of the “must see” attractions were (we typically like to find our own corners of the parks instead of running to the touristy areas so please don’t hate us).
The first stop on the high level overview of Death Valley was Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the continental US. It’s also a sprawling salt flat, a landform which neither of us have seen in real life, so that was pretty freaking cool! You can walk pretty far out onto the salt flat and even look up to see the “Sea Level” sign towering some 200 feet above you. Highly recommend!
We then drove Artist’s Drive, a two lane road that winds through some of Death Valley’s badlands and leads to Artist’s Palette, a chunk of rock that is multicolored and just beautiful! Another highly recommended cruise off the main road!
Our last stop before we made it to sunset at the dunes was Golden Canyon. By this point, we needed out of the car for longer than a bathroom break, so we opted for the one mile hike through Golden Canyon, and boy was it beautiful! Jagged golden cliffs ascended on either side of us as we climbed through the slot canyon. This was beautiful and we had the area all to ourselves, providing the perfect retreat for our first day on the road together.
We made it to Mesquite Flat just as the sun dipped behind the peaks to the west and settled in for stargazing at one of America’s recognized “Dark Sky” parks. I honestly have never seen more stars in my life! We highly recommend checking out this park on a night with no moon for views of the milky way!
Ultimately, we wish we had at least another day to explore Death Valley, but that just means we get to go back!
Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, & Mt. Whitney
This is absolutely one of the most stunning places we’ve ever visited. We set up camp along the Eastern Sierra Nevada in the quaint western town of Lone Pine and made a day out of driving the Jeep along every ounce of dirt road this area had to offer! We woke up to the most stunning view of the towering Sierras outside our cabin window and the mountain fever hit hard.
Our first drive of the day was up Mt. Whitney Portal Road. We’ll honestly probably never summit the tallest mountain in the continental US because of my absolutely wrecked knee, so we decided to get as close as we possibly could. This thirteen mile drive along the outskirts of the Alabama Hills and up into the Sierra is just incredible. Since no one is hiking up to 14,000 something feet this time of year, we got this drive entirely to ourselves, and I wish you could’ve seen our jaws drop with every bend in the road.
We then descended the mountain and made our way over to the Alabama Hills. This BLM-managed area of dirt roads and giant rock formations directly in front of Mt. Whitney and the Eastern Sierra is one of the most picturesque and unique landscapes my eyes have ever seen. This area has been the set of so many movies, and in visiting it’s easy to see why. Please just take this as your sign to go, you will not regret it. We also recommend having four wheel drive and going off the heavily trafficked Movie Road for more unique views of the hills and the mountains behind it.
Lone Pine is incredible. We could’ve stayed here for so many more days and we will probably be back soon because we just couldn’t get enough of the views and the small town vibes. We’re just gonna throw the idea out there that this area would be an epic place to elope or have an adventure session ;)
Joshua Tree National Park
We made one last stop on our way down to spend actual Christmas in San Diego: Joshua Tree National Park. Joseph has never been before and we had to break up the long drive somehow!! I have truly never seen Joshua Tree this lush and beautiful, and this is the national park I’ve visited most of all of them.
Maybe it was because I was visiting with my best friend, but Joshua Tree just hit different this time. It was so much more lush and colorful than I remember, and I fell in a whole new kind of love with this unique desert landscape.
We did a short little hike: the Forty Nine Palms Oasis hike just outside of Twentynine Palms. It was a pretty easy trek that led to an oasis with, you guessed it, 49 palm trees. It was fun to actually spend some solid time out of the car and explore a corner of Joshua Tree I’d never seen before!
By the way, all of these photos are available for purchase!
We sell landscape photos of our travels in our Print Shop and they look pretty darn good on walls ;)