Western Adventure 2014: Stop 5: Lee Vining, CA (Mono Lake)

On our travel days, it is very rare that we don't find ourselves on the road at lunch time. Fortunately, we are towing our kitchen and dining room behind us. All we need is a place to stop but that's not always easy. Rest stops are perfect when they show up at the right time. Sometimes it's just a wide place on the edge of the road.

On our trip to Lee Vining, we were fortunate to come across a viewpoint next to Lake Crowley (a stopping point for much of the water on its way to Los Angeles).

Lake Crowley.

Looking towards the mountains from our Lake Crowley Viewpoint.

Upon reaching Lee Vining, we checked into our home for the next 2 nights, the Mono View RV Resort. Nice people, nice park and it almost has that promised view of Mono Lake.

We arrived in Lee Vining on my birthday and, one of our plans was to have my Birthday dinner at a restaurant that we've heard about for years. It's located in a still functioning Mobil station and has a chef with a Michelin star. We were disappointed to learn that it hasn't opened yet for the season. Talking to our RV park hosts, we learned that the options in Lee Vining were pretty dismal. We considered driving down to Mammoth to go to the Charthouse. More about my birthday dinner later.

Our park is on the northern edge of Lee Vining and we found the Mono Basin Scenic Visitors Center about half a mile up the road.

Mono Lake is one of the oldest lakes in America (760,000 years old) and it has no natural outlets. Water flows in and evaporates. Minerals that flow in stay there so the mineral concentration in the lake is at about 10%. Fish can't live in the lake but brine shrimp and flies do very well, as do the water fowl that feed on them.

Los Angeles started redirecting water from Mono's sources early in the 20th century so the water level dropped by a lot. All around the lake, you see tufa tower formations. They were created when calcium-rich springs bubbled up into the carbonate-rich lake, forming calcium carbonate. When the water level dropped, the tufas were exposed. The water level is higher than it was but the tufas are still exposed.

An interesting fact (possibly TMI): The Paiute who originally lived at Mono Lake used fly pupae as one of their primary food sources. The Yokuts, who traded with the Piute called the Paiute the Monache, meaning "fly-eaters". Early explorers shortened Monache to Mono and applied the name to the region.

Some tufa near the visitors center.

2 Islands with completely different origins, The black island is a volcano. The white island is former lake bottom that has been pushed above the surface by a magma bulge (that's not frightening, is it?).

Mono craters in the distance.

More tufa.

A different tufa area.

I mentioned our hunt for a place to have dinner on my birthday. A couple of miles North of town, we saw a restaurant at the Historic Mono Inn that was open 3 hours a day, 3 days a week. The menu looked good so Kristen called for a reservation. The restaurant only opened yesterday. Our waiter was the owner and the chef served each dish personally.

The interesting thing was that Ansel Adams used to stay at the hotel and that it is currently owned by Ansel Adams son (who also owns the Ansel Adams Gallery). We have several Ansel Adams prints at home that his son printed from the original negatives. The location for this hotel and restaurant was at one of the prime spots for viewing the lake.

View from our table.

So that was our first afternoon and evening in Lee Vining.

We started day 2 out by walking Lee Vining's main street from one end to the other and back (took about 5 minutes).

Kristen outside the Bronze Bear General Store.

Once we got into the truck, our first stop was the end of the accessible portion of Tioga Pass..

On the road to Tioga Pass.

At the Tiogo Pass road closure. We believe that the mountain is Lee Vining Peak.

Next we headed for South Tufa. Along the way we came close to several of the Mono Craters.

One of the craters.

Looking the other direction (from the same point at more craters.

South Tufa is by far the most surreal tufa area at the lake. The whole area looks very alien. I was jut thinking that this looks like the terrain that the spaceship streaked over before crashing in the lake in the original Planet of the Apes.

One of the aliens (not an ape). This one started to chase us until it spotted a small dog that looked like easier pickings.

More craters on the way out.

We next decided to head down to Mammoth to find some lunch. Along the way, we drove the Mammoth Lakes Loop. We parked in Mammoth Village and found the restaurant pickings rather slim. We decided on a place called Toomey's and received a real shocker. We were the only people in the place and were chatting with the waitress when the guy who was scrubbing spots out of the carpet said something about gas station food.

You remember that we had wanted to have dinner at the gas station restaurant that had the Michelin star chef. After thinking about it, and noticing that lobster taquitos (the Michelin star chef's signature dish) were on the menu, we asked the floor scrubber if his comment had had anything to do with the gas station restaurant in Lee Vining. It ends up that he was the restaurant owner, Matt Toomey and that he was the Michelin star chef. He and the owner of the gas station restaurant had a falling out at the end of last season and he's opened his own restaurant.