Kickin' it in Bishop
Bishop, CA - Sunday, 1 July 2018, 11am.
Last night we stayed in Bishop, California, a small town along US-395 on the remote eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. How small? Well, the Wikipedia page for Bishop says the town itself is fewer than 4,000 population but notes the "built-up zone" surrounding the town proper numbers nearly 15,000. A veritable metropolis!
We've stayed in Bishop a number of times over the years because, well, there isn't a lot else out here if you want hotels, restaurants, and grocery shopping. The town of Mammoth Lakes about 30 miles north has everything a traveler might want but it's also a resort town so prices are high. And so is the yuppie/annoying tourist factor. Lone Pine, 60 miles south, is the next town with reliable hotels though it's even smaller than Bishop (it doesn't have that "built-up zone" around it) and is much farther south than anything we've scoped out for this trip. So Bishop it is.
Last night was a quiet one for us. It was a day full of adventures, and we got back to down from the last one, driving down Silver Canyon, around 8pm. We discussed where to go for dinner and decided just to grab some take-away sushi at the supermarket and eat in our hotel room. After that we basically crashed for the night. ...Unsurprising as I'd been up since about 5:30am and we'd had such a full day of adventure.
This morning I got up early and worked through my backlog of blogs (ed: notice this one is still two days behind). I let Hawk sleep in for another 90 minutes or so as she'd been unable to get to sleep until around 1am due to pain issues. I made breakfast of leftover sushi from last night plus a few pieces of sausage from the hotel's small breakfast buffet. (Mmm, sushi and sausage!) Once Hawk got up we finalized plans for today and tonight: we'll hike in the John Muir Wilderness and camp nearby.
But first there were some errands to do. I put "wash the car" on the list because it was so dusty. Refer to the last picture in last night's blog to see what I mean. It was so dusty that when we opened a door, dust from the outside would swirl into the car. So we took it to a self-service wash. Here's the result:
Next we needed to get a bit more breakfast in our bellies (leftover takeaway sushi was... edible... but not enough to be filling) and buy some groceries for camping this evening. We made a few stops for this task, one of them at famous Schat's Bakkerÿ.
I've written about Schat's before, including in this 2013 blog. I think we've stopped by Schat's pretty much every time we've been in Bishop. And apparently so does everyone else passing through town. It's that kind of place, popular for being popular. And just good enough to deserve it, though the throngs of touristy customers mobbing the place subtract from the experience.
The annoying yuppie factor at Schat's this morning was about as high as it ever is. Fortunately we could avoid the yuppie parking problem by walking. Our hotel was just one block away. And we avoided the lengthy lines for sandwiches and sweets because we didn't want either of them. We just wanted some bread. ...Which Schat's has plenty of. Because really they're a bakery, not a bakkerÿ. That's just some cutesy-shit nonsense that helps make the place such a yuppie/Facebook/Instagram magnet.
Now it's time to head out. The mountains are calling!
Last night we stayed in Bishop, California, a small town along US-395 on the remote eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. How small? Well, the Wikipedia page for Bishop says the town itself is fewer than 4,000 population but notes the "built-up zone" surrounding the town proper numbers nearly 15,000. A veritable metropolis!
We've stayed in Bishop a number of times over the years because, well, there isn't a lot else out here if you want hotels, restaurants, and grocery shopping. The town of Mammoth Lakes about 30 miles north has everything a traveler might want but it's also a resort town so prices are high. And so is the yuppie/annoying tourist factor. Lone Pine, 60 miles south, is the next town with reliable hotels though it's even smaller than Bishop (it doesn't have that "built-up zone" around it) and is much farther south than anything we've scoped out for this trip. So Bishop it is.
Last night was a quiet one for us. It was a day full of adventures, and we got back to down from the last one, driving down Silver Canyon, around 8pm. We discussed where to go for dinner and decided just to grab some take-away sushi at the supermarket and eat in our hotel room. After that we basically crashed for the night. ...Unsurprising as I'd been up since about 5:30am and we'd had such a full day of adventure.
This morning I got up early and worked through my backlog of blogs (ed: notice this one is still two days behind). I let Hawk sleep in for another 90 minutes or so as she'd been unable to get to sleep until around 1am due to pain issues. I made breakfast of leftover sushi from last night plus a few pieces of sausage from the hotel's small breakfast buffet. (Mmm, sushi and sausage!) Once Hawk got up we finalized plans for today and tonight: we'll hike in the John Muir Wilderness and camp nearby.
But first there were some errands to do. I put "wash the car" on the list because it was so dusty. Refer to the last picture in last night's blog to see what I mean. It was so dusty that when we opened a door, dust from the outside would swirl into the car. So we took it to a self-service wash. Here's the result:
Next we needed to get a bit more breakfast in our bellies (leftover takeaway sushi was... edible... but not enough to be filling) and buy some groceries for camping this evening. We made a few stops for this task, one of them at famous Schat's Bakkerÿ.
I've written about Schat's before, including in this 2013 blog. I think we've stopped by Schat's pretty much every time we've been in Bishop. And apparently so does everyone else passing through town. It's that kind of place, popular for being popular. And just good enough to deserve it, though the throngs of touristy customers mobbing the place subtract from the experience.
The annoying yuppie factor at Schat's this morning was about as high as it ever is. Fortunately we could avoid the yuppie parking problem by walking. Our hotel was just one block away. And we avoided the lengthy lines for sandwiches and sweets because we didn't want either of them. We just wanted some bread. ...Which Schat's has plenty of. Because really they're a bakery, not a bakkerÿ. That's just some cutesy-shit nonsense that helps make the place such a yuppie/Facebook/Instagram magnet.
Now it's time to head out. The mountains are calling!