Retirement Road Trip 2011: Day 36, Friday 9/30

270 miles, still camped at KOA in Coarsegold, CA. I left the camper at 6:15 to get an early start and beat some of the traffic.

WOW!! Where do I begin today? I saw too much to explain everything. My original goal was to drive a route called the Tioga Pass Road. It goes east - west across the park and across the Sierria Mountains. I wanted to see Mono Lake, which is a part of the Western Great Basin. Great Salt Lake also lies in the Great Basin.

The interesting thing about Mono Lake is that there are four or five streams that enter into it, but there are no streams or drainages leaving it. Where does the water go? Evaporation! The annual evaporation is about 45 inches per year. As a result, the water has over time becoming more concentrated with minerals. In fact, it is so salty now, that no fish live in it. But it supports a huge population of brine shrimp, and as a result is a major stop over for migrating birds. Between 1941 and 1982, the lake level dropped 41 feet. This was due to the city of Los Angeles diverting some water from the Mono Lake feeder streams into the aqueducts feeding the water needs for LA. Federal legislation eventually stopped that practice and the lake level has slowly been rising. Evidence of the amount of drop is the exposed tufa. Tufa is the calcified remains of bubbling springs that created these columns when the calcium in the spring water bonded with carbonates in the lake water. Back before 1941 all the exposed tufa was underwater. You can see how much is exposed now.  I had taught about Mono Lake in my classes, but it was really neat to see it in person.

The route to Tioga Pass took me to the Yosemite Valley floor. I got to see the morning sun hit the face of El Capitan, and Bridalveil Fall. I plan to spend Saturday exploring the valley floor more.

The Tioga Pass Road is anything but boring!! I was constantly surrounded by breath taking mountain vistas, barren rock faces, beautiful mountain ponds and lakes.

In addition to all the above, there are forest fires. A lightning strike induced fire that started on September 13th, called the Tamarack Fire, is burning a large area near the Tioga Pass Road. On the way to Mono Lake I saw smoke, but no evidence of the fire. However, on the return trip, traffic was being held up because the fire had spread to the road edges. The road acted as a natural firebreak, but the concern was the amount of heat. Eventually they allowed traffic to flow on a one lane basis, with the lane closest to the fire shut down. Fires are a natural part of the ecosystem, and it is better to have small fires each year that keep the fuel used up rather than going many years without a fire and allowing the forest floor to accumulate a lot of fuel, thus resulting in a huge fire.

I had to pass back through the valley floor on the return trip, and got to see Bridalveil Fall again. This time the afternoon winds had picked up, and the water was dissipating in the wind before it even hit the valley floor. I've added a video to show it. Really cool.  It may take a few seconds to load.  I'm still working on some technical issues here.  I uploaded the video in two forms.  The first one is using the video upload feature, but the quality is poor.  The second video is uploaded via the add a picture from iPhoto format, but does not seem to work all the time.  Who knows, maybe you can't see either one. :-(

OK, that's enough for today. More tomorrow. This place is AMAZING!!!!