After we left the site in the morning, I discovered that my hearing aid case’s cover was missing. We drove back to the site hoping that it would be there and sure enough I found it in the dirt where we parked. Whew.
We took the Rubicon Trail that led us to a lighthouse along Lake Tahoe. The lighthouse was the highest elevation lighthouse in the United States. It was built in 1919 for $900.
We stopped to go on the Balancing Rock trail, which is a short self-guided trail with a cool rock that is about 130 tons balancing on top of a smaller rock.
On the way out of Tahoe we stopped by the Emerald Bay lookout, which was extremely crowded, just like most of Lake Tahoe. Then we stopped by Camp Richardson, a little resort/rest stop for some ice and ice cream. Our destination was to be Yosemite National Park.
We took a road that went partially through Nevada and it’s capital, Carson City. Once we entered back into California, we came to Mono Lake. Mono Lake has many large mineral deposits called tufas. The mineral content is so high only brine shrimp, flies, and shore birds lived there.
The lake is used as a water supply for Los Angeles (LA actually owned the part of the park where we had lunch), and so the water dwindled down year by year. There is a boardwalk going down to the shore (over the marshes) with signs showing the height of the lake at different year periods. It went down more than 20 feet since 1850. This was one of my favorite places on the trip and I took lots of pictures.
In the distance you could see the youngest mountain chain in North America, and lots of volcanic rock.
At the place we had lunch, there were some people with a bunny on a leash. They took the bunny to the water fountain and from the picnic table it looked like the bunny was drinking water from the fountain. Theresa says she saw the dad cupping water in his hands and feeding it but I have my doubts.
When we got to Yosemite, there was a pretty lake at 9000 feet elevation called Ellerly Lake. We stopped there to take some pictures, then headed to our campsite in Tuolumne Meadows.
Our site was next to some loud talkative people who gave us a bottle of wine (they had a lot of extra bottles). We hung out with them for a bit then went to sleep early. It got really cold that night, almost as much as our campsite in Mendocino.