Destination: Owens Valley : Into Inyo : Not far from Mt. Whitney, a quirky B&B; leads to explorations of Independence

INDEPENDENCE, Calif. — Driving back from a ski trip to Mammoth last winter, I was passing through what appeared to be a one-note town on U.S. 395 when I was suddenly confronted with a beautiful courthouse on one side of the road and, opposite, a beguiling old hotel decked out with twinkle lights.

I stopped to investigate the hotel . . . and stepped into another world. Brahms chamber music was playing, tea service had been set out, the furniture looked cozy and there wasn’t a soul around. Amazingly, a sign out front advertised doubles for $45 per night! When my wife, Kathleen, recently suggested that she was badly in need of a weekend away, I knew just the place.

The town was Independence, smack in the middle of the Owens Valley in Inyo County, 14 miles north of Lone Pine, gateway to Mt. Whitney.

The hotel, built in the 1920s, was the Winnedumah, which now calls itself “A Bed and Breakfast Inn,” if for no other reason than breakfast is included. We checked in late on a Thursday night in July. When we awoke, we looked west over the rooftops to the Sierra peaks, still snowcapped. In the other direction was the Inyo Range.

Mozart accompanied breakfast: serve-yourself cereal, fruit and bread pudding. We took our tea out into the garden, where proprietor Marvey Chapman was tending to her Aphrodite Rose of Sharon and other flowers. She’d just returned from Hungary, where she visited Liszt’s home and heard a Schubert concert in Dvorak Hall. “Everybody here thinks I’m eccentric,” Chapman noted.

She recommended a hike in Onion Valley, a short drive west into the Inyo National Forest. Morning church bells pealed as we packed our sandwiches. En route to the trailhead at 9,200 feet, we drove past the home that was writer Mary Austin’s from 1868 to 1934, described on a plaque out front as the “little brown house at the end of the village street [in] the town that lies in the hill dimple at the foot of Kearsarge . . ., “ a reference to the peak and pass above. The trail took us over snow in several places, snow streaked with pink. We didn’t think we were suffering effects of altitude; a hiker coming in the other direction suggested it might be an algae. We stretched out on an immense flat rock on the shore of Lake Gilbert. The warm sun and cool breezes provided the perfect antidote to the 90-degree weather in the valley below. We ate lunch and Kathleen fell asleep, wakened only by the buzzing of a bee.

Back in town by midafternoon, we noticed the Eastern California Museum. The first exhibit inside focused on the War Relocation Center at Manzanar, an internment camp south of town, where Japanese-Americans were forced to live during World War II. There was a replica of the Manzanar sentry watchtower, which had been outfitted with machine guns and searchlights, but also golf clubs used at the Manzanar nine-hole course. Most impressive was a print by camp intern Kiku Meanu with a Sierra peak behind--as beautiful as any Japanese watercolor of Mt. Fuji.

Returning to the hotel, we opened a white Bordeaux we’d brought along and, to the strains of mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, enjoyed it in the decidedly eclectic foyer decorated with Guatemalan weavings and animal bones, a grand piano and an Indiana Jones-like suitcase, books and games.

The doors to unoccupied rooms were open, and we snooped. They were generally modest, but No. 125 was a standout, with floral fabrics, an antique dresser and armchair; you’d share a bathroom Euro-style, however, if the hotel were full. (Rooms with private bath are $10 more.)

Not a whole lot of restaurant action in Independence, and the hotel serves dinner on Saturday night only. So we headed for Lone Pine, site of numerous restaurants, not to mention motels and souvenir shops. Steakhouses are the rule here, and at the one we went to--Seasons--we were surprised to find escargot and seafood on the menu; we ordered both, and the food was very, very fine. Seasons was chock full of French and German tourists.

The next day we passed through Lone Pine again en route to the Alabama Hills and Whitney Portal, trail head for hiking and other activities in the Mt. Whitney area.

Since 1920, hundreds of films and TV episodes featuring such stars as Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and Humphrey Bogart have been made along Movie Road in the Alabama Hills. TV shows: “The Lone Ranger” and “Bonanza.” Movies: “Gunga Din,” “How the West Was Won” and, most appropriately, “High Sierra.”

Now and then you can imagine posses coming down through the passes, but the guns are silent, and the only sound is a couple of crickets in the wind. It looks like Joshua Tree National Monument, without the Joshua trees. Thousands of feet above, Whitney Portal buzzed with people picnicking and fishing for trout; cascading water roared nearby. About an hour up the Mt. Whitney Trail--which ultimately leads to the highest point (14,494 feet) in the contiguous United States, a pilgrimage I’d made a few years back--we had our own picnic, sandwiches that at that point looked more like tacos.

We’d picked them up in town, but needn’t have. The Whitney Portal Store offers groceries, breakfast, lunch and dinner--prime rib special, $8.95. At hike’s end, we stopped in for snow cones.

We enjoyed them while watching local Elmer Holmes cast from one side of a pond all the way to the other. I thought, why doesn’t he just stand on the other side and let the line down? But Holmes was, in fact, reeling in enough fish for himself and all the kids gathered around him.

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Back in town, it was hot, in the 90s. Chapman recommended a dip in Billy Pond, accessible by washboard roads. Now, Billy Pond is not your ordinary pond--or maybe it is. A pond regular suggested we wear shoes, inferring that the bottom was, um, sensual. We went in gingerly at first, then more gingerly. Once in, it was great.

Winnedumah means “stay right where you are” in Paiute, and that’s what we did for dinner Saturday. It was prix fixe, the prix was $10, and included Caesar salad, brisket of beef, baked beans, corn bread, a glass of wine and “heavenly hash,” an ice cream dessert. Chapman oversees the kitchen (though in her absence, Ann Cappadano does that and just about everything else in the hotel).

We were seated near John and Patty Ogden of Studio City, who’d also discovered the hotel on their way back from Mammoth; that day they’d gone hiking in Onion Valley, to Gilbert Lake, in fact . . . After dinner, we all played Scrabble.

I had started reading one of the books at the hotel, and asked if I could purchase it. Chapman said, no, maybe leave another in exchange. My wife left, appropriately enough, “A Room With a View.” (And we just got a postcard saying she loved it.)

There was one stop left. We’d passed the Japanese-style stone sentry posts several times now, and this time we turned in. I read on a plaque at the site that Manzanar, one of 10 such “concentration camps . . . had held 10,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, the majority American citizens.”

Manzanar was recently declared a national historic site; the park service is hoping to develop a visitors center at the camp’s auditorium, now being used as a heavy equipment maintenance facility.

Internees lived in a 600-acre camp of tar-paper barracks surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. To improve their surroundings, they planted trees and constructed Japanese-style rock gardens. What remains beyond the gate are building foundations and remnants of the rock gardens.

It was Sunday, it was sobering, it was a lot like going to church. We later read that a seminar took place that same day in Los Angeles at which Japanese-Americans and Jews compared camp experiences.

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Budget for Two

Gas from Costa Mesa: $36.68

Winnedumah, three nights: 177.15

Dinner, Seasons: 45.71

Dinner, Winnedumah: 20.00

Other meals: 33.13

Groceries and water: 27.38

FINAL TAB: $340.05

Winnedumah Hotel, 211 N. Edwards, Box 147, Independence, CA 93526; reservations (619) 878-2040.