Death Valley to Alabama Hills

Driving from Death Valley National Park to Alabama Hills, CA| Father Crowley Lookout | Lone Pine, CA | Camping in Alabama Hills | January 2025

After 4 days of exploring Death Valley, it was time to move on to our next destination. We definitely want to come back someday to hit some of the areas that we missed, but we feel like we had a good amount of time here and did as much as we could with Charlotte this time around. And now that the holidays were over, we needed to get to a place with more stable cell service. However, I don’t know if we can say we truly experienced Death Valley to the fullest given that it was January and perfect temperatures for exploring the whole time — maybe someday we have to come back to feel just how hot it can get??

We completed our morning routine, then packed up and got on Emigrant Canyon Road heading back down to CA-191. On our way, we saw some wild burros along the side of the road. On our first night camping in Wild Rose Campground, some burros came near the campground and woke us up at 3am with their loud braying, and after hearing that Curtis had seen some on his hike in Mojave National Preserve, I had been hoping to see some as well. So this was a fun little sighting on our way out!

We made it back to the highway, then started driving West. We still had a ways to drive before exiting Death Valley, and the drive was very scenic. We drove up and over another mountain range, and enjoyed seeing little forests of Joshua Trees. For our last stop in the park, we pulled over at Father Crowley Lookout, where we enjoyed the view of the canyon, and took Charlotte on a walk down the gravel road for more views. Apparently the military still uses this area (specifically the canyon) for flight exercises, which was their requirement when they gave the land over to the national park.

Finally, we made our way out of the park and continued heading West to our next destination. While this trip was meant to be focusing on the California deserts, there was one place that we were so close to that has been on my bucket list for a decade, and we just couldn’t miss our opportunity to visit. That place was the Alabama Hills: a rock wonderland located near Lone Pine, right at the base of the Sierra Mountains, and under the shadow of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the continental US. Since today was a Friday, we were hoping to find a spot to park here and stay for the whole weekend.

The drive on CA-190 was absolutely breathtaking once we left the park and the snow capped Sierra Mountains came into full view. Honestly, once we saw them, I don’t think we managed to take our eyes off of them for that entire weekend, they were so captivating. Obviously getting to hike in them would have been a treat, but they are deceptively much higher and further back than they appear, and also much colder and snowier. This weekend wasn’t about summiting these peaks, it was about just basking in the beauty of them…and plotting all the things we’d like to do someday. When we arrived in Lone Pine, Curtis bought a Nat Geo map at the visitor center for this very reason.

We had enough food to make it through the weekend, but we thought it would be a good idea to grab a few veggies and snacks just in case. But stopping at the grocery store made us think otherwise — turns out a little remote town in a touristy area in California is a little on the pricey side. Thankfully they had some spinach on clearance so I didn’t have to walk out empty handed (also, the following week I found a much more affordable way to shop in CA, but more on that later!) After that, we headed into the Alabama Hills to find a camping spot.

It was love at first sight when we entered this area — after seeing pictures of it for years and wanting to visit, it certainly lived up to the hype! We drove in on Movie Flat Road and started looking for a dispersed site. There are established paid campgrounds, as well as many free dispersed sites here — all you have to do is fill out a free permit online or at a kiosk within the park, park only in spots where it’s allowed, and practice Leave No Trace guidelines. The main road driving in was well maintained gravel, and there were plenty of spots that we could access with our 2wd van, but sometimes the side roads would become sandy or suddenly turn to 4×4 so we just had to be careful. Not knowing how many sites would be available and accessible to us, we decided to take the first vacant spot that we came across that seemed like it would be good enough. It wasn’t quite level, but we were sure it would be worth it just to get to spend time in this area.

We set up the van, then got out and started wandering around. We climbed on the big rocks and walked down the road, marveling at each different view. However, our excitement faltered a little when a few issues became apparent: first was that the cell reception wasn’t very good here, and Curtis had work he needed to get done over the weekend and some meetings to attend. We didn’t want this to take away from our time here, but after not having cell reception for most of our time in Death Valley, we really needed it if we wanted to stay for several days. Second, we discovered there was a huge group of people camped at a spot just on the other side of the rock formation from us, who were making a considerable amount of noise and constantly had camp fires going which made our site smell like smoke. And third was that when we started walking on and around the rocks surrounding our site, we realized that unfortunately whoever camped here before had used this area as their own bathroom….many times and in many places….and did not bother to clean up after themselves…even down to the toilet paper. Yeah, it was disgusting, and we had to restrict Charlotte to just the immediate area around the van.

Because of all this, we started to feel a bit down. We had wanted to be here so bad and to explore the area thoroughly, but we started to think we might just end up leaving earlier than planned. After a few hours of hanging out in this spot, we decided to take Charlotte on a walk on the road. We started down a nearby road that we hadn’t turned onto before because at first it had looked to be too sandy. We walked a ways down, until we came across another vacant site. It was much more removed from other campsites, and right after it the road turned to 4×4 so not many could go further than this spot. It appeared to be much cleaner and more level, and when I checked my phone I noticed that somehow I had much better phone service here than I did anywhere else. And so Curtis ran back to move the van over here while Charlotte and I checked this spot out more. Our moods improved instantly, and from that moment on we were able to have the perfect weekend that we had imagined in the Alabama Hills!