Diaz Lake south of Lone Pine CA

Camped at Diaz Lake for about a week. It is a state park and cost $14 per night but the park system has a senior pass for $80 that is good for 15 days. You can stay in one park or split your time between a number of parks in the area! I has pit toilet and spigots with potable water. The lake was a marsh until 1872 when an earthquake dropped the ground 20 feet opening a new spring and creating the lake!

There is good birding at the lake. I talked to local birders and they named several other local spots but I never made it to any of them. Some of the birds I saw were:

American Kestrel

 Belted Kingfisher

 Cooper's Hawk

Great Horned Owl

I also identified a couple of cacti in the area:

Beavertail Cacti

Teddy Bear Cholla

For all you movies buffs, Hollywood has made over 300 movies in the Lone Pine area. They have just built a movie museum with details and pics of many movies. Stars like, John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Mel Gibson and Gary Cooper have all made movies here. I took a drive up to the filming areas. The camp host at Diaz Lake gave me a map showing a number of movie shooting locations and entertained me with his adventures being a movie extra! Here are some pics of the area. 

I do not know what movies were shot on the first two pics but the third one is where the final stand off  with the Graboids from Tremors was shot.