Mono Lake

 

Surf's Up at Mono Lake

We'd never stayed in the cottages at the Lake View Lodge in Lee Vining before, so I called ahead to make sure the room had a toaster. We planned to prepare all our own meals during a three-day visit, and bagels were our go-to breakfast. We were told that, no, the cottages do not have toasters... so we brought our own large toaster oven. Guess what. The rooms do, in fact, have toasters. Moreover, the cottages have pretty much everything you need: a 2-burner gas stove, a small sink (with sponge and dish soap), a microwave, a small fridge, a toaster, a coffee-maker, pots and pans, dishware and silverware, and even sharp kitchen knives. About all we needed to bring was our food and spices, and a small cutting board.

Temperatures were mostly in the mid-80s during the day, which was well above Lee Vining's June average of 70 degrees, but we also experienced a high of 95 at one point. It was great to be able to retreat to the cottage for cool showers and cold beers.

In addition to visiting Mono Lake, we made short jaunts to McGee Creek, the June Lake Loop, upper Lee Vining Creek along Poole Powerplant Road, and Lundy Lake, ostensibly to find interesting photo and painting opportuntities. In the end, Mono Lake and its environs provided the greatest interest.

We drove up over Sonora Pass since Tioga Pass wouldn't open until the next day. We made a couple of stops along the way to check out the powerful flows along the Middle Fork of the Stanislaus River. 

The aspens are all a beautiful green righ now in Dunderberg Meadow (a favorite location for viewing fall color).

Mono Lake Vista Point
"Save Mono Lake" has long been a rallying slogan, so I got a smile out of the updated bumper sticker. The lake level was about 6,383.8 feet, still shy of the 6,392-foot management level.

Despite being shy of the desired water level, this was the highest lake level I could remember experiencing. It was actually a little frustrating to try to get around and find compositions with so little dry land available.

The wind was blowing pretty strongly onshore, and splashing against the tufa to keep photographers from getting camera lenses too close to the edge.

Late afternoon storms added to the drama among these fascinating formations. Despite visiting the lake many times, I was still surprised to find how dense and heavy tufa is when I picked some up at the Mono Lake Scenic Area Visitor Center just north of Lee Vining.

Old routes that led through the tufa formations during low water levels were no longer dry....

Here's hoping for a third straight wet winter next year to get that water level up another eight feet. That should make getting around even more of a challenge!

I also wondered if all the rain has contributed to more dense plant life around the tufa. I don't recall the brush always being so impenetrable.

Typical mountain traffic in the morning along the June Lake Loop....

The first lake you come to is Grant Lake.

Sierra sulphur-flower buckwheat coated the hillsides along parts of the loop road.

The McGee Creek Pack Station

Mule Ears Along McGee Creek Trail

This was as far up as I hiked since I was worried that my wife was getting cooked in the heat while painting back at the trailhead. 

McGee Creek's gorgeous upper canyon entices you to keep going higher.

After leaving the South Tufa area the day before, we spotted an interesting burn area that was sprouting prickly poppies, and decided to return to check them out. On the way I couldn't resist this desert view of the lake from the road near Panum Crater.

The South Tufa formations are in the foreground, with whitish Paoha Island in the distance and black Negit Island farther back.

Prickly Poppies thrive in the old August 2020 burn area at Mono Lake.

A faint rainbow shines over the lone standing snag in the 2020 Beach Fire zone.

Bare branches in a fire-scarred landscape. This area used to be full of brush and jackrabbits. Another nearby burn area I photographed in 2016 (between Mono Craters and I-395) has already recovered its brushiness to the point where you can no longer even tell at a glance that it ever burned.

More prickly poppies, with Mono Craters in the distance.

A long view toward the South Tufa area.

This panorama was stitched together from several frames shot with a 300mm lens from a nearby dirt road...

...where the shadows were long, indeed.

As the day pushed toward its end, we drove down to Navy Beach to check out the sand tufa formations.

I was impressed that these relatively delicate formations survived the Navy's presence in the 1950s and '60s. I pictured a lot of building infrastructure being here, but a docent at the visitor center said there was no actual base. Instead, the Navy used the lake as a testing area for the likes of new-and-improved depth charges....

We got pretty lucky with a stunning sunset.

I was amazed to find that my Motorola Thinkphone camera could get this shot, which compares very favorably against the exposure-stacked version produced by my Nikon D800E and Aurora HDR software.

Sunset with Sand Tufa

Some of the sand tufa looked like the ancient ruins of a lost civilization.

I had to wonder if the CHP patrol car actually pulled the color-coordinated RV.

Walking around Lee Vining we stumbled onto the Mono Basin History Museum, which was closed for the day, but several interesting artifacts were available for inspection on the grounds outside.

We had a nice view of Black Point while out on our walk, just past the museum and close to the high school (which celebrated eight graduates this year). We didn't discover the Lee Vining Creek Trail across the street from the Lake View Lodge until sundown on our last day, so we had to save that for next time.

Lee Vining Mono Cone

Vacancy, Lee Vining

Nicely's Restaurant Sign

Lee Vining Sunset

On the way home via Tioga Pass, we stopped to check out a couple of areas where I was drawn to some roadside aspen trees.

Aspens along Poole Powerplant Road.

Eye of the Aspen

A few iris in a wet meadow.

Ellery Lake, on the way up to Tioga Pass.

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Antler Muncher

 

Found Feather With Nasturtium Flowers, Golden Gate Park

Luckily I had the photo above from my Friday walk. I didn't want to give top billing to either the back-yard antler that's being munched, or the critter who did the munching.

I have several antlers in the back yard. I find them decorative, and I also hope the plants and local wildlife will get some benefit from their minerals. 

Strangely, only two of the antlers have been getting munched over the years. The "freshness" of the antler doesn't seem to be a draw, and the preferred antler -- the one getting the most attention -- is only a spike.

Just in the last week or so, the preferred antler has been getting massively gnawed. This is despite the fact that it's been there for 10+ years, and until recently had just a few gnaw marks on it. I was curious to find out who was doing the chewing, so I set out a trail cam to find out. 

I figured it was either a squirrel or a rat, or both, so I set the cam to run day and night. During the day, no squirrel came by, but one or two of the resident juncos used the antler as a perch. The cam did catch a rat shortly before midnight, but the rat was just passing through. I thought I might have to leave the cam out for another night. But the culprit showed up on the very last capture.

Gnaw Marks on Antler

The prime suspect didn't take the bait, at least not at first....

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Slow Days

 

Ambling along with a bobcat one day....

I'd been looking forward to getting a new pair of walking shoes at the start of June, figuring the pair I bought when I retired two years ago should themselves be retired. I wore the old pair for one last walk down the hill to the shoe store where I paid about $160 for a fancy new pair. 

This was a fair amount more than I'd expected to spend, but the shoes looked good and felt good, at least for most of the first day I walked in them. By the end of the second day, the mild irritation I'd been feeling in the left shoe had created a blister, and the blister has kept my feet out of shoes for two days. 

Lucikly I can still get around in my ancient Teva sandals, but I've missed my daily routine. I might have risked longer walks if I wasn't saving my feet for a trip out to the Eastern Sierra for a few days of nature-watching and also, for my wife, decompression from another year of teaching.

Taking it easy for the day, I watched another excellent photography documentary on Kanopy called Garry Winogrand, All Things Are Photographable. And as I was later reminiscing over some old cat photos I thought I'd post a few from an encounter I had back in 2011.

Look at those big rear feet!

A lazy morning...

...a good time to catch a few winks...

...maybe do a little prowling...

...or just find another sunny spot...

...to get cleaned up...

...and catch a few more winks...

...before saying adios.

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Keeping Cool

 

Cormorants and Gulls Play it Cool at Seal Rocks

A neighbor told me yesterday that it was supposed to be 80 degrees in San Francisco today (85 in Oakland), but I had my doubts. As he was telling me this, it was still foggy, and getting foggier. But this morning I woke up to clear blue skies and wondered if my neighbor had been right after all.

The National Weather Service says it should reach 79 degrees this afternoon, but I don't know where they take their measurement. I would bet they don't take it west of Twin Peaks, which is where I live, and where today's high (as of 2:45 p.m.) was 69.1 degrees. (When I took the photo above from the Cliff House at 10:45 this morning, it was 70.7 degrees, but the thermometer had been in my bike bag and exposed to the sun.)

In any case, my neighbor works in Walnut Creek, which has a Heat Advisory in effect for temps expected to reach 96 degrees -- well above the historic average for June. This brings to mind the climate-change joke that in another ten years, 96 degrees in June is going to seem like the good ole days.

On the way to the beach I always pass the bison paddock in Golden Gate Park. The bison have been kept out of their main stomping grounds for a while now, and I suspect it's due to the presence of all those white-flowered plants, which are poison hemlock.

This photo of Seal Rocks is from the low tide back on May 29. There are more sea stars around the mussel beds here than I saw recently at Duxbury Reef.

I hadn't seen this before -- a guy with a fishing pole on a beach-cruiser e-bike, probably talking on his cell phone about the one that got away.

This large pool was left by the high tide. 

There were a few fishers on the beach in front of Sutro Baths, but this guy had climbed up onto the (usually) offshore rock. This was shot at about the time of this morning's 4.5-foot high tide, so he was in no danger of being stranded for long. But you wouldn't want to be climbing off there around tonight's high tide of 6.8 feet.

Cormorants and Guano on Seal Rocks

It's been foggy for a while, so I hadn't really noticed until this morning how brown the grassy hillsides have gotten on Mt. Tam.

It's a beautiful day at the beach, but even if it does reach 80 degrees downtown, a light jacket might come in handy out here....

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