Here's the hatchery's main building, looking as if it's a scene from Central Europe rather than eastern California. This and the following 5 pics were taken with the Panasonic TZ1, a 5-megapixel, 10x optical zoom point-and-shoot digicam that produced consistently-beautiful images in the clear Sierra light --- until it "seized-up" after 32 shots. I think it was a case of altitude-sickness...

Here's another angle of the hatchery's main building (constructed in 1917) with the foreground reflecting pool and a Sierra peak in the distance.

That foreground reflecting pool is filled with huge Golden Trout called "Alpers".

To get a better idea of what's to come, here's a map of the areas I visited, all on the road west of Bishop --- the dirt road to Coyote Flat, Lake Sabrina at road's end, Blue Lake on the trail south of Sabrina, and the Tyee Lakes on the South Lake road.

From Independence it's about a 30-mile drive to Bishop, the Owens Valley's main town, where it's time to go off the pavement and head up the super-steep, 4-wheel-drive "road" to Coyote Flat, a plateau at 10,000 feet that overlooks the glaciated peaks of the Palisades, seen here in the distance. These are the southermost glaciers in the continental United States. No campgrounds here, but the views are some of the best in the eastern Sierra.

The next morning I walk down the rutted track only to find out...someone has been here before me. An old cabin with an outhouse; perhaps someone's secret hideaway? The morning sun bathes the scene in golden light, but I decide not to stay too long in case the owner shows up toting a shotgun...

The landscape was lit with golden early-morning sun about 20 minutes before the previous pic was taken.

Here's a TZ1 16:9 aspect shot of the Palisade Group with glaciers clinging to their steep sides...

And finally my Panasonic FZ30 chimes in with its own view of the Palisades, famed eastern Sierra cloud formations, the expanse of Coyote Flat --- and the purple majesty of Inyo Meadow Lupine, a type found only in this area. I'll discover during this trip that the mountain wildflowers are brilliantly-numerous for it being so late in the season thanks to a very wet, late winter.

A closeup of Inyo Meadow Lupine taken with the FZ30's Macro AF setting.