Day 13 - June Lake, CA

The Mammoth Lakes area is beautiful! We tented at Twin Lakes. We did not see any bears even though there are 40 that are in the area. It was a cold night with temperatures in the mid 30s.  That is kind of interesting...we went from picnicking at 111 degrees in Death Valley to sleeping in the 30s in a 12 hour span.  We also had a huge altitude change as well.

We were up at 7:30 AM to look at the local lakes by 8:50 we had the tent down and we were ready to roll!  We visited with a couple and the wife commented about my strong Minnesota accent. Ha!

The lakes here as well as the Hoover Dam were very low of water.  We can see the affects of the severe drought.

We came across a strange place where the sign said it seeps high concentrations of carbon dioxide, which can be fatal! We didn't stay there long.

We went Mono Lake to check out the strange tufa formations.  Tufa are delicate carbonate rock structure which form underwater as chemicals in the ground seep up through the lake bed, causing the rock formations to grow like coral does in the sea.  While there I saw and heard a life bird - Brewer's Sparrow on the Sagebrush along with a Savannah Sparrow. We drove the June Lake Rd and stopped to do a little hiking.

We arrived at June Lake at 2:30. We are staying at an inn and for the rest of the day we will take it easy and enjoy this beautiful place! It has a balcony with a view of the lake and mountain. We need to recharge before we camp in Yosemite for the next five nights.  We have traveled over 3,000 miles so far!

We stopped in at a microbrewery, but it wasn't my kind of place. Later we ate over priced meals at a restaurant and then we stopped at an overpriced store to buy a treat. Everything out here costs more than in SD, so that is difficult to get used to.

I loved this campsite below these tall trees.

I've never heard of anything like this before.

Our picnic site for the day.

The tufa is certainly an unusual rock formation.

Tufa in the water.

This is another variety of tufa.

More tufa!

There were signs reporting that the tufa is very fragile.

June Lake is quite pretty.

This is our room at the Heidelberg Inn at June Lake.

It was really nice to have our own balcony with a mountain view.