Mono Lake and Tufas

One of the favourite parts of our trip so far for me was our visit to Mono Lake, CA. Naturally, since I love dinos I also love volcanos and this lake is in a volcano crater--happiness!!
We got there later in the day so we went to the tufas, which are not to be missed! I stole this explanation from the monolake.org website:
"Tufa is essentially common limestone. What is uncommon about this limestone is the way it forms. Typically, underwater springs rich in calcium mix with lake water rich in carbonates. As the calcium comes in contact with carbonates in the lake, a cemical reaction occurs resulting in calcium carbonate--limestone. The calcium carbonate precipitates (settles out of solution as a solid) around the spring, and over the course of decades to centuries, a tufa tower will grow. Tufa towers grow exclusively underwater and some grow to heights of over 30 feet. The reason visitors see so much tufa around Mono Lake today is because the lake level fell dramatically after water diversions began in 1941."
As you walk down to the lake they have a marker showing where the lake level was before the diversions--it's pretty shocking to see. Thankfully they've stopped removing water to save the lake and they have a goal of where they want the lake level to return to. It's hard to imagine how long it will take for the lake to fill up that much again.
Anyhoo, I had a hard time choosing photos because everything there is stunning (also, they were taken by Luke, which is why they are so good). We had a rain storm, which you will see approaching in the photos, which made for extra dramatic shots. Enjoy!

I think this kind of looks like a castle

the bubbles are where the tufas are slowly forming

the sky was really that colour

Las Vegas and California

Luke had to get a replacement bank card (there was an info breech at one of the places Luke used his bank card, so the bank required him to get a new one) and Las Vegas was the closest bank to us. Las Vegas is one of my least favourite places--it's too hot and too over the top for me. The good news is that there is a great bike shop that carries Shredly shorts, so I bought my first pair! YAY! I've been wanting a pair for a while, so that made the trip worthwhile to me.

We left asap and headed for Charleston Peak about 45 minutes out of town. It's nice that there is a mountain relatively close to Las Vegas, where you can escape the desert for a while. It was *cold*, which was a big change from the 30+ weather we were in during the day. We weren't keen to ride the trails there though so we continued NW towards Bishop California.

The route ended up being a series of back roads and, much to our happy surprise, we ended up in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest are of the Inyo National Forest. This is where the oldest trees in the world are located--between 4000-5000 years old!
We had to drive up and up and there's a lovely view point where you can see the 'Inconsolable Range' of mountains. Mount Whitney is in the area, but you couldn't quite see it from that area.

See the mountain chain in the distance?

We kept going up and stopped at the visitor centre where there are a few trails to hike. There was a fair bit of snow, so we stuck to the shorter trail. These trees have grown so old partly because they have really no competition (it's very high up and the soil is alkaline, so little can survive there) and partly because it's so remote. The trees grow very slowly and the wood is incredibly strong. Thankfully they are protected!
The oldest known tree, named the Methuselah Tree, is somewhere in this forest. However, it's exactly location is kept secret to protect the tree.
The trees are so amazing!:

This tree must be in a vortex--take that Sedona!

There was an interesting section with these red rocks left over from when this used to be the bottom of an ocean. Crazy to think about given how high up it is now.

Thousands of rings

I'm so glad we came across this area! Luke had learned about it a few months before but we didn't realize we'd be passing it. One of my favourite unplanned stops!

We reached Bishop later that day. It's a super cute hippie town that's well known for it's climbing, bouldering in particular. The area gets very little precipitation so you're almost guaranteed to have good climbing weather (although it was raining when we were there...and that was the talk of the town). They have really cool huge boulders there too. We went to Buttermilk Rd to check out the scene and there were people there even in the rain.
We were in town during Mule Days, the town's week long festival celebrating their history with mules. We had seen wild mules on the way there and there were progressively more and more people in cowboy hats and spurs appearing in town. I was super jazzed about the Mule parade, which is the largest non-motorized parade in the world since the mules pull the floats. Unfortunately we miscalculated the day so I didn't get to see the parade after all. I can imagine it was amazing though :)

the view from our campsite

More St.George Utah

I have another forgotten photo. This one is of the (deceased) scorpion we found at the Dome in Sedona. It's only a about an inch long and it took a while to figure out that it wasn't alive.

While we were in the St.George area we camped a few nights in Leeds Canyon. There are a few spots that are pretty great, but my favourite was by a big cliff of cool rocks:

There was some rainy days and a lot of the trails don't do well in the rain due to the ground getting sticky like peanut butter--it cakes on the bike wheels and ruins the condition of the trail when it dries. Luckily it dries fairly quickly. We decided to go the Guacamole trail, which is ok when wet but the road up to it is not. They recommend parking before the steep part of the road and riding the rest on your bike, but since our truck is a 4x4 and Luke is an excellent driver and we learned to drive in slippery snowy Canada we figured we'd be fine--which we were. However, when we were 2/3 of the way up two trucks (from California) were going backwards down the road (it's only one lane wide). Since that's a bad idea we questioned what they were doing and they insisted that we had to drive backwards down the mountain side too because they had already gotten stuck twice and couldn't make it up the road. We made it down alright but it was a silly situation to be in especially since other people had made it up the road just fine. Luke met them on the trail later on and it became apparently they weren't very experienced--so they hopefully learned some lessons that day!

We also did the JEM trail (and I, unknowingly, did my first IMBA epic. Yay me!). SO FUN! When we got back to the truck a group from Ottawa had written us a message on our back window to say hello! We also saw two horny toads on the trail.

We checked out the Little Creek Trail too, but by that point Luke's back (which had been giving him troubles for a few days) had gotten pretty bad and he had to cut the ride short. Luke is very tough and has a high pain tolerance and I have never known him to stop riding because of pain...so I knew it was pretty bad. [as a point of reference, Luke once broke his wrist on a ride, then finished the ride and rode his bike home. He walked in the door and, in a nonchalant way, said that I needed to take him to emerg]

Here's a bat that was hanging out (nice pun, eh? eh?) outside the ladies bathroom at one of our campsites:

Here's our happy bikes enjoying the view:

Here's a group of cute cacti:

A couple of extra Leeds Canyon shots:

Next time: we brave Las Vegas.