The wind bearing down on our tent during
the night was amazingly weird! I thought
our tent was going to blow away, or at least our rain fly. Thank goodness we stopped at a hardware store
back in Pacifica and invested in the heavier tent stakes. The ones that actually come with tents are
ridiculously bendable! The air smelled wonderfully of sage as the field behind us was sage and another bushy plant I didn’t
recognize.
We didn’t leave real early as we had such
a strenuous day the day before (hiking UP, remember, :)). We took off and decided to give Mono Lake a
quick explore. The lake has what they
call petrified springs in it and around it from when it was “fuller.” Los Angeles apparently gets their water from
the tributaries that feed this lake and the lake dropped dramatically as LA was
diverting all this water; since it doesn’t drain, and was now literally only ½
full, it salinity jumped to now two times saltier than the Pacific. Where the springs feed into the lake, the
minerals solidify by building on each other, gradually creating these upward
shapes called tufa towers. They look
like something from a science fiction movie! They actually have an arrangement
that LA can’t divert water away from the lake if it falls below a certain
level. It is very close to that number
now. The water was also home to a
certain fly larva which feeds the zillions of birds that migrate through the
area and was food for the original natives of the area. Apparently tasty? It was a nice hike from the parking lot to
the lake and around.
Then on the road again, destination
somewhere between here and Denver! Our
entire drive today was through deserts.
There is amazing diversity in deserts. You’d think it just piles of sand
everywhere, but that would not be a correct assumption! Some are covered with sage and the other
previously mentioned unknown round bush, some are brown grass, some short
trees, lots of varying rocks, varying in size and color, and the sand apparent in all environs.
It is such a stark beauty. We started
the day in the eastern foothills of the Sierra Nevada’s and ended the day in
the far western slopes of the Rockies.
The world stretches for miles and miles of
open space out here. One stretch was 14
miles from 1 “hilltop” to the next… the
next stretch was another 16 miles! We
stopped in middle of the road and got out and took a picture of the long ribbon
of highway behind us. The next stretch
of straight road went for over 21 miles with NO turns! There was a sign when we left Tonopah, an old
mining town, one of the few we passed through, stating that it was 163 miles until the next service station. We passed towns that
used to be towns but are not abandoned houses and barns, unmended fence
rows. Crossroads that once boasted gas
stations, rental cabins, and such also left behind in the sand.
We’d see cow crossing signs and no cows,
horse crossing and no horses, deer and tractor crossings but not deer and tractors. They do have “cattle guards” on the road so
apparently there are cows crossing the roads at some points. We did see finally cows grazing in the desert areas
of Nevada. We wondered how they
could possibly survive on what was growing between the sage brush! Perhaps their mountain views kept them happy
or, more logically, they bring in hay. Once we got closer
to our destination for this evening, and the Interstate, we saw more and more cows
and hayfields. In order to actually
produce hay, it has to be irrigated, so there are giant green circles of hay in
the middle of brown. (There is a LOT of
brown in California, Nevada, and Utah thus far—unbelievable how brittle
everything looks.) One ranch went on for
miles and miles, with cows just enjoying their evening sup. Those fields were at the base of some of the uniquely
colored Utah mountains. What a view for
those bovine!
At one point we saw a mountain side that
looked like it was a victim of a fire in recent past. It was waving this way and that and looked
like it had started up the mountain.
Andrew has sharp eyes and suddenly took a left turn. It was not the victim of a fire after all,
but an actually a giant lava bed. Yes, lava, as in volcano. We drove a dirt road around the flow of black
rocks (maybe 20 feet plus high at spots) for a few miles into the desert before
turning around. It was literally a
“dust” road-it was too dry to be considered a dirt one. Andrew
“borrowed” a rock from the flow-the rocks we collect keep getting bigger. The one yesterday from the top of Yosemite
was heavy enough as Andrew lugged it down the 2800 vertical drop in his
backpack…. Others from glaciers, Arctic Ocean, etc. add ballast to the truck as
the trip rolls on. Some people collect
sea shells, others feathers, we collect rocks.
We crossed through Nevada and are spending
the night about ½ way through Utah in Salina (my 41st state! I will
add two more on Tuesday – New Mexico and Oklahoma – plus tomorrow will make
Colorado an “official” counter as the only other time was just a previous
layover point when flying back from San Francisco and I didn’t leave the
airport -- as we zig zag our way down to Houston --- the New England states
(Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut) and
Hawaii are yet to be conquered in future journeys). The entire trip was mostly two lane highways
– most of our trip since leaving Cordelane, Idaho has been two lane roads,
other than a little from the Canada border down to Portland, and some while in
San Francisco (more like 8+ lanes there sometimes :) ).
Tomorrow we get on I-70 through the mountains
into Denver, and most of rest of trip then home is via interstates. The trip odometer rolled over the 10,00- mile
mark today also (plus estimated ~2000 on the ferry).
Stop and see bryan and family in Colorado
ReplyDelete