Slow down through the village — it's compact, people cross this road with fishing rods and ice cream, and everything worth stopping for is packed into about four blocks.
June Lake calls itself the Switzerland of California, and from this street you can see the case: a small alpine town pinned between a lake and a ten-thousand-foot ridgeline. It has been a getaway town for almost exactly a century — anglers first, then Hollywood, then skiers — and it has stayed small while its neighbor Mammoth, over the hill, grew twenty times as big. Locals consider that a victory, and after a day here you'll probably agree.
The grand old timbered building here in the village is the Heidelberg Inn, from the nineteen twenties, built Bavarian-style back when this town was inventing its alpine identity. In the thirties and forties it filled up with movie stars — and our storyteller has been waiting all morning to tell you about that, so I'll leave it to him just past town.
Practical notes: this is the best food and fuel stop on the loop, the general store is real and old-school, and if you're here on a summer weekend, park where you first can rather than where you hope to. The road bends west out of the village toward Gull Lake — stay with it.
Photo: Don Graham from Redlands, CA, USA - God bless it! · CC BY-SA 2.0