Sunday, May 29 2005

We were packed and got out of the house around 11:15 and headed south on Latrobe Road. Halfway to CA-16, a three feet rattle snake scurried across the road, but I managed to swerve around it. It wasn’t as lucky with the car behind me though, and got hit mid-back by the right wheel-pair. At the end of 16 we cut over to CA-49 towards Jackson where we made a short stop to get gas before heading east on 88. A nice day to drive, this year’s spring has been late with a lot of precipitation and moderate temperatures but today was sunny and the temperature decent. We had to climb many fairly steep slopes going up the mountains but the M5 handled them without protest in sixth gear and without loosing one mile per hour.

We stopped at Silver Lake to eat our lunch sandwiches in the sparkling clear weather with temperature around 18C, but the lake still had ice on it and specks of snow were all around us. After we had chewed down our lunch and the kids had thrown a few snowballs, we got back into the car and headed for CA-89.

After getting over the Monitor pass at about 2500m we took a quick break to shoot a few more pictures and stretch our legs before hitting 395 and turning south towards Mono Lake.
Right before the final descent towards Mono Lake there is a rest-stop with a gorgeous view over the lake where we stopped to devour the sight.

After a short rest we rolled on down the hill to the lake and got off to take a look at the tufa-towers at the first lake access point before heading into Lee Vining and the Gateway motel. Despite the discouraging weather forecast the day was sparkling clear in this area too, and we hung out basking on the deck in front of the hotel with a beer. It did turn out however, that the predicted low temperature of 31F (-0.5C) was not altogether off as the sun set that night, and we were glad we had a heater in the room! 120 West towards Yosemite wasn't closed with 8 feet of snow in the pass without a reason.

We learned from signs at our first rest-stop at the lake that the place to go to really see Tufa’s was at South shore, which was also confirmed by the lady in the reception that had a nice picture from the area hanging on the wall. So our afternoon mission was to go to south shore and find dinner at the Mobil gas-station we'd been hinted about. We headed south a little bit on 395 and then turned east on 120, only to find a perfectly straight and evenly paved road with flatlands on the sides… No chance of a cop hiding, what the hell. I downshifted to fifth and let the engine do its work and soon got up to 150mph / 240km/h, but the protesting of my travel companions as well as an approaching bend in the road prohibited anything beyond that, for now, and I still wasn’t convinced of the 155mph electronic speed limiter.

As it turned out, south shore was absolutely amazing with hundreds and hundreds of tufa’s forming an entire landscape that we had totally missed on our last trip to the area in -95.
Mono Lake certainly looks like nothing else with all its Tufa-towers sticking up in and around the soda-water and its bizarre pair of islands, one black and one white, in its arid high desert setting.

After we spent an hour or so exploring the area, we headed for Mobil and dinner, which despite being half gas-station was fairly decent. I couldn’t help but smile sitting next to two uniformed CHP’s…

 

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