Independence outdoes other Owens Valley towns by offering, besides the usual requisites of food and accommodation, excellent accounts of local life and history at its Eastern California Museum (http://www.inyocounty.us/ecmsite/), 155 Grant Street. Among the museum’s exhibits are a striking collection of Paiute and Shoshone basketry, and a thought-provoking exhibit on one of the darker episodes in California’s past: the internment of 10,000 Japanese-Americans at the Manzanar camp, just outside Independence, following the outbreak of war between the U.S. and Japan in 1941.

Detour – Lone Pine

South of Independence on Hwy-395. It seems that everyone who comes to Lone Pine and doesn’t need to eat or sleep either barrels straight through on Hwy-395, or branches west along the 12-mile Whitney Portal Road to reach the trail-head giving access to 14,494-ft Mount Whitney, its summit – the highest in the continental U.S. – the prize at the end of an arduous 10-mile hike.