Lone Pine Campground- Inyo National Forest

We stayed here when we left Death Valley. It is just outside of Lone Pine, CA, above the Alabama Hills, which offer practically endless opportunities for hiking and climbing. The boys loved exploring in the huge rock jumbles. Lone Pine Campground must have one of the best views of any campground out there. It sits in a little canyon at 6,000', in the shadow of the high Sierra, just below Mt. Whitney. Incredible. There is a trail up to Whitney Portal that leads right from the campground. We were there in April, and the weather was fantastic. There are very few trees on the lower portion of the hiking trail- in summer I would bet it seems pretty exposed, but we saw lots of wildflowers. The Inyo National Forest website indicates that there are no walk-in sites, but I saw them, and the recreation.gov site will allow you to reserve them. They looked very nice.

This was a superb campground- killer views, nice hiking, an icy-cold creek for the kids to play in. Our site was a bit close to the Whitney Portal road, and we did occasionally hear cars drive by.

Further info: www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo/