If you're ever in the vicinity of Independence, CA there's a lot to see. I mentioned that we went to Manzanar one day. On another two days we visited the old Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery, which operated from 1916 until 2008 and is now a fascinating museum about the life cycle of trout, the ecology of the region, and some of the other wildlife.
We visited twice because the first day we lollygagged on the grounds enjoying a picnic lunch and didn't realize we'd missed the museum! We came back the next day. This was typical of our picnic lunches:
The building itself is beautiful, and was built to stand "forever" although it took the intervention of a group formed to save it when floods wiped out most of the stock ponds and the Fish and Wildlife Service decided to close and abandon it.
The pond downsteam of the hatchery is beautiful, and has extremely lively and overfed trout. They're overfed courtesy of the little fish-food vending machine on the banks of the pond. For $0.25 you can get a drinking cup's worth of fish pellets. When you start scattering them on the waters, the word spreads. Some of these guys were the length of my arm!
I didn't realize that mulberries grow in California, but here they were on the grounds. Ripe, or at least ripening. Nice. Tart. A bit astringent.
On the day we visited while the museum was opening, we found reasons to spend money in the gift shop.
I don't need new potholders, but these are fun and they go to a good cause: supporting the museum. They're also a bit of a gift to myself: new potholders for the new Princessmobile. Symbolic of a new life.
