Grandview Campground - Inyo National Forest

Grandview Campground offers some of the best star gazing outside of standing on top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii.  The campsites are fairly well-dispersed, so your neighbors aren't right on top of you in most spaces.  Most offer some shade, provided by numerous pine trees, but be aware that after a heavy winter like this year, the pines are so happy that it rains sap, and everything underneath them will be showered with tiny, fast-drying dots of sap and larger globs of the sticky stuff.  There is at least one picnic table and a fire ring in each of the developed sites.  The campsites at the east end of the grounds have plenty of room for RVs, and seem to be favored by the astronomers.  Show a little consideration, and if you see a campground with a telescope set up, don't light up that campfire at night in the spot next door!  You know there are a lot of stars when a guy with no special knowledge or equipment can stick his camera on a tripod, point it sort of in the direction of the Big Dipper (as I couldn't see squat through the viewfinder - the light coming from the menu on the view screen completely blinded me and I had no idea how to turn it off), and hold the shutter open for 30 seconds and actually get an image.

While there were more than a dozen campsites occupied there this week, Grandview was still extremely quiet at night - no loud music, no shouting drunks (just a couple of quiet ones, gazing in wonder at the stars), no late-night vehicle traffic, and no barking dogs.  More importantly, there were no mosquitoes, which made camping there a real pleasure after some of the heavy swarms we've encountered in the Eastern Sierras.  The absolute lack of water and dry, dusty environment of the White Mountains does have its advantages!

Speaking of water, there is none at Grandview.  Load up with as much as you can carry before you come, and then add another 5 - 10 gallons to put out your fire!  I was amazed at how fast, how hot, and how long the downed pine wood gathered here burns.  Near sea level in Florida, it would take a good-sized pile of kindling and a lot of huffing and puffing to boil a Kelly Kettle full of water to make coffee.  At Grandview, it took one handful of twigs and a single spark.  The pine exploded into flame, burned hotter than any pine I've ever used, and didn't turn immediately to ash but instead held the flame far longer than a typical Florida slash or longleaf pine.

Between the dry climate and the highly flammable trees and duff covering the ground, please be extremely careful with your fires at Grandview and bring that extra water mentioned to put them out.

There are a plethora of pit toilets, some of which give off a delightful citrusy smell and have newer plastic seats in a unisex design, and others which have separate men's and women's stalls, stainless steel toilets, and a smell that will knock you down when you open the door.  It seemed like there was a toilet for every two or three campsites, so you'll never want for a room full of flies at this campground! 

Lest I forget, Grandview has more than its share of black flies.  If you've ever lived next to a cow pasture, you'll feel right at home.  While they are an annoyance, I'll take flies over blood-thirsty, biting insects any day!  They also make for an interesting learning experience for our son, the "homework torture table".  This involved sitting at the picnic table at the height of the fly-hour in the afternoon, surrounded like King Kong by buzzing dive bombers, while concentrating on doing school work that was supposed to be done the day before.  The homework torture table makes boot camp look like a walk in the park, but the work was completed accurately, and I'm sure his concentration skills have been honed to a fine point.

The Marmot Tent performed well, and due to the sap showers, I left the rain fly on the entire time.

The biggest animal we saw was a jackrabbit.  There are no bear lockers, so you'll have to devise your own method of keeping your food from the wild animals, should any happen to wander through your campsite.

Dinner at Grandview was salmon poached with a blueberry compote...camp food ain't what it used to be!

Finally, if you're looking for blazing Internet or even a working cell phone, Grandview is not the place for you.  However, if you head down the road to the scenic overlook on White Mountain Road, and walk up the path and sit on the bench with a view of West Bishop, adequate 3G speed is available from Verizon to pull about 7Mb of e-mail in 3 minutes, and the AT&T iPhone also had 3G service, albeit a bit slower.  Here's a picture of my office.