June 2015 - We spent the last weekend in June hiking in the Owens Valley region. The area lies east of the Sierra Neveda mountains and is flanked by the Sierra on the west and White Mountains and Inyo Mountains to the east. The valley floor ranges from 4000 to 7000 feet in elevation with mountains rising to 12-14,000 feet on both sides. We hiked at 8,000 to 10,000 feet at a leisurely pace, so the altitude did not bother us at all. Despite California's epic drought with the severe lack of snow from the winter, the trails were filled with wildflowers, beaver ponds, streams and waterfalls. We will surely visit this area again in the near future.

Here are photos from the weekend.  Eastern Sierra Hikes​  Click on the thumbnails to show pictures with captions and use the left & right arrows to navigate. Another click on the photo or using the slideshow feature shows a larger photo but without the caption. 

Flowers of the Eastern Sierra: Most of the flowers photos are posted in a separate gallery here.  Eastern Sierra Flowers  There were many to show, if you are interested. We identified some of them using Laird Blackwell's excellent book "Wildflowers of the Eastern Sierra" (with almost certainly some mistakes on our part).