Tuesday 24 July 2018
Today we are up with the sun. O bakes an orange chocolate chip cake in our frittata pans which we enjoy with one of our Colorado peaches. The peach is surprisingly good! We stop at the visitor center to refill our water bottles before crossing the Nevada desert. We fuel up Vincent in Ely, NV. We have about 360 miles to go today. We divide the drive into 60 mile sections, three each. This routine helps keep us from getting too drowsy as we go.
The drive across Nevada is actually pretty interesting. We traverse high dry valleys interspersed with mountains – classic basin and range topography. Mid-afternoon we cross into California where we must stop at a produce inspection station. We are allowed to keep our Colorado peaches and our California grapes, but the young inspector apologetically confiscates our eastern-grown apple. Vincent is thoroughly inspected for gypsy moth eggs. We are cleared to proceed and presented with a blue certificate announcing that we have already passed gypsy moth inspection in case we briefly duck out and back into California.
As we drive westward we pass through welcome rain showers. We are hoping for a deluge to douse the fires west of Yosemite. We have read online that Yosemite Valley will be evacuated tomorrow due to dense smoke. I feel bad for all those people who worked so hard to get reservations.
The Sierra Nevada is quite hazy and the air smells smoky as we arrive in Lee Vining. We have dinner at the Epic Cafe which we discovered last year on our way to Bishop CA for our Sabrina Basin hike. We dine on tilapia, sauteed veggies and brown rice… delicious! While there, we meet a couple from Langhorne, PA. On our stroll back to Murphey’s Motel we stop in at the office of the Mono Lake Committee, a conservancy that helps protect the lake and promote water conservation in Los Angeles. Decades ago Los Angeles was drawing water from streams feeding Mono Lake which is a major stopping point for migratory birds. As water levels dropped, the protected island in the middle of the lake became a peninsula, allowing coyotes to feast on the birds’ eggs. Now that water levels are rising again, the migratory birds are protected. O and I learn that the Committee leads birding tours and canoe trips on the lake. Sounds like fun! Since we will be in the area for two weeks, smoke permitting, we may join these adventures.