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| Grandview Road |
Date: May 23, 2026
Place: Grandview Campground, Big Pine, California
Coordinates: 37.332452, -118.189469
Length: 1 mile
Level: moderate
Last May I traveled with Pappa Quail to the White Mountains, hoping to see the rosy finches on the White Mountain Peak Trail, where I have seen them last year when I hiked to the summit. Our plan didn't work though, and we ended up hiking the Discovery Loop Trail at the Schulman Grove of the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. It was late in the afternoon when we finished that hike, cloudy and cold. As we made our way down the road to the Grandview Campground, which was our plan B for staying at night, the air warmed up, and the clouds were mostly left behind at the heights of the mountains. We set up our tent and ate dinner, all very efficiently. Pappa Quail was tired and he was ready to enter the tent and go to sleep.
Not feeling sleepy, and seeing that there was about an hour of daylight left, I suggested to Pappa Quail to go on a short walk up the Grandview Road, which was a dinky dirt road that extended past the campground and down the western slope of the mountain. Pappa Quail agreed, so we took our cameras and set out on the dirt road.
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| Our hike as captured by my GPS |
Grandview Campground is located at an altitude of about 8,200 ft above sea level. This altitude is well below where the bristlecone pines live. The vegetation near the campground was a forest of pinyon pines and junipers interspaced by areas of low scrub of rabbitbrush and other high desert knee high bushes.
The bushes were not contiguous. The space in between them was of broken, sharp edged stones. In the cracks between the stones small wildflowers were blooming.
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| Dwarf Phlox, Phlox condensata |
I got off the trail and started wandering between the shrubs, looking for and photographing the wildflowers that I saw.
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| Desert Phacelia, Phacelia fremontii |
The scrub was surrounded by a forest of junipers and pinyon pines. These small trees are the most common trees of the Great Basin desert. The pinyon-juniper forests cover most of the ridges between the continental divide and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges.
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| Singleleaf Pinyon, Pinus monophylla |
Not only wildflowers attracted my eyes. A bright khaki-green ephedra bush at the edge of the scrub stood out among the gray rabbitbrush shrubs. This ephedra, being a gymnosperm, is more related to the pines and junipers than to the angiosperm rabbitbrush rabbitbrush.
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| Green Ephedra, Ephedra viridis |
Far ahead on the west I could see the dirt road, as it rose on a slope and curved left, disappearing into the forest. I identified immediately the two stony bumps that protruded from the dirt right before the curve: it was exactly in that spot where a decade ago we had a nasty tire puncture and had to spend a good hour in the heat changing the tire and the rest of the afternoon in a car shop, to fix the flat tire.
I wanted to point out that spot to Pappa Quail but he wasn't near me at that moment. He was on the dirt road still, searching the pinyons and junipers for birds.
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| Skunky Monkeyflower |
I returned my attention to the wildflowers I saw between the shrubs. While at a first glance there seemed to be only a few species blooming at the time, the more I looked below and between the rabbitbrush shrubs I saw more and more species of wildflowers.
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| Matted Wild Buckwheat, Eriogonum caespitosum |
Many of the wildflower species I saw blooming there were unfamiliar to me. I cannot say that I've never seen them before but I certainly haven't seen them recently enough to remember.
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| Cold Desert Phlox, Phlox stansburyi |
Pappa
Quail joined me in off trail exploration for a little bit. We could
hear some birds here and there and even saw a few flying in the
distance, but none was visible long enough to identify, let alone to
photograph.
After some exploration in the trail-side scrub we returned to the dirt road and resumed our leisurely walk westward.
The trail left the scrub and entered the juniper-pinyon forest and we got a much closer look at the rocks that weren't covered by soil. The rocks looked brittle and crumbly.
In the cracks of the rocks and between the broken stones grew some more wildflowers. Many of these wildflowers I've seen earlier at the Schulman Grove of Ancient Bristlecone Pines.
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Not all the wildflowers were small. Some larger bushes were also blooming. There were more large bushes at the lower gampground area than at the higher altitudes where the bristlecone pines grew.
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| Antelope Bitterbush, Purshia tridentata |
I was hoping that Pappa Quail would find some birds but the entire forest seemed to be eerily quiet. Meanwhile, I was seeing more wildflowers still.
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| Indian Springparsley, Cymopterus aboriginum |
We reached the cruve of the road where we had the flat tire incident ten years ago. I pointed it out to Pappa Quail/ It's funny how funny these things can be when looked upon from the distance of time. It was a pretty stressful thing when it happened though, mainly because we had four kids with us at the time (the chikas and two of their cousins).
Pappa Quail was ready to turn and go back to the campground. I convinced him to complete ascending up to the next high point, where we had a nice view of the mountain complex on the west, and the now quickly setting sun.
We didn't linger to see the sunset though. There were too many clouds veiling it on the west, and Pappa Quail was getting tired. He wanted to go back to camp. I snapped photos of some pf the wildflowers I saw near the road bend, and we turned and headed back east.
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| Eremogone kingii var. compacta |
On our way back I took a closer look at he rocks. They looked not only brittle but in some places they were layered very thinly, like filo dough.
We descended slowly down the trail, chatting quietly between us. I did pause every now and then to look at yet another wildflower I saw.
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| Desert Biscuitroot, Lomatium fimbriatum |
I did however, stop completely when I noticed something unusual on one of the juniper trees near by. It looked like a whitish flower. The only thing is that junipers don't have any flowers.
I took a close up photo of the thing. At a closer look it appeared to be some kind of a strobilus (a cone), but it looked nothing like a juniper's cone. (The juniper cones are the little brown spheres at the ends of the twigs). This structure turned out to be a gall, the first of its kind that I chanced to see.
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| Juniper Urn Gall Midge |
Pappa Quail pointed at a pricklypear cactus that was on the side of the road. The cactus didn't look very happy. It was small, and its pads were thin, and it wasn't blooming.
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| Mojave Prickleypear, Opuntia polyacantha var. erinacea |
I did see some nice onion plants blooming nearby, though. There was a small patch of the onions, and neither plant had any leaves, only blossoms.
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| Inyo Onion, Allium atrorubens var. cristatum |
We kept walking down toward the campground. Pappa Quail was no longer looking for birds. I was still looking for wildflowers.
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| Eyed Gilia, Gilia aphthalmoides |
When we were down at he level of the campground I looked back to the place where the road entered the pinyon-juniper forest. There was the sound of approaching cars, and soon, two pickup trucks came down the road. One of the trucks stopped near us and we chatted a bit. They told us that the road continued much further, and that it was rough.
It took some moments for the dust to settle after the trucks continued on. We resumed our walk back and soon entered the perimeter of the campground area.
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| Slender Cryptantha, Cryptantha gracilis |
There were more wildflowers even within the area of the campground and I did stop to take their photos. But then I stopped altogether - I heard a 'ping' from my phone.
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| Torrey's Milkvetch, Astragalus calycosus var. calycosus |
It was the only spot in the area that had a little bit of cellular reception - enough for texting. I let Pappa Quail go on to our campsite and stayed behind so I could touch base with our young chika who remained at home on her own and check that she was all right.
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| Yellow-eyed Popcornflower, Oreocarya flavoculata |
After being reassured that everything back home was in good order I continued to the campsite to complete my evening routine and check in for the night.
Thus ended the first day of our long weekend vacation. We didn't see the rosy finches, but we did see the ancient bristlecone pines. We camp below the White Mountain Peak, but we did get to camp once more at the Grandview Campground, where we had stayed when the elder chika was only 2 years old. It was at that time when we realized that juniper berries weren't toxic.
