For our next stop, we moved just about 30 miles down Highway 395 towards Mammoth Lakes. We found a great boondocking spot off of Hot Creek Hatchery Road. Can you see our RV in the picture below?
There’s lots of wildlife near this site – we’ve seen several deer and heard coyotes howling in the distance almost every night. One night as we sat in the RV we saw a group of deer on the ridge in front of us in the last few moments of daylight.
Just down the road from our campsite is the Hot Creek Geologic Site. Hot magma about 3 miles below the earth’s surface causes boiling water to bubble up from the creek bed. Apparently this used to be a popular swimming spot, but in recent years scalding hot water has caused severe burns for a few unfortunate people, so the area is now closed to swimming. You can walk a small trail down next to the creek though, and it’s also still a popular area for trout fishing.
There are lots of forest service and gravel roads to explore around our campsite, and we saw lots of deer and cows while driving around.
The weather has been pretty chilly in this area, and one day they were even predicting some snow. We only got some flurries in our campsite, but the Sierra Nevadas in the distance got a nice coating.
On our last day at this campsite, we got some neighbors! Tim and Amanda of Watsons Wander were also camping in the area, and they moved to our site. We had a nice evening watching the sunset before it got too cold and we had to move inside.
Looks like a great site and you got together with the Watsons, cool!