Instead of taking the freeway, we headed north to Ridgecrest and then cut straight over the bottom end of the Sierra, past Lake Isabella.

This proved to be a great idea, as the area around Lake Isabella is just gorgeous and deserves future exploration.

We stopped off in Kernville to find out about bicycle trails (for the future) and then carried on towards the Central Valley. To get there, we had to go over a 6000' pass on hw-155.

And as we went around a switchback, I looked up and there was a baby bear by the side of the road, scrabbling in a tree stump.