Follow Us In Our Travels

4/26/2013, Friday: Staying at Carson Nugget Casino, free, in Carson City, NV today. The road to Yosemite is still closed, so we kept on going north. The area between Crowley Lake and Carson City goes through Humboldt Toiyabe National Forest.  Lots of trees and some snow on the mountains yet. Lots of rocky areas and some desert. Lakes, rivers, irrigation and cattle. We passed an area that had a forest fire. Curt is pleased with how the RV handles the hills. Hwy 395 takes us through Nevada at this area and then north will be back in to California.

We spent the last three days at Crowley Lake Recreation Area near Crowley Lake, CA. I’m not really sure what the address was as there are small towns and lakes all over. Open fishing starts this weekend here. It’s a BLM campground with a picnic table, grill and lantern pole. There are water spigots every so often and a dump (for $5). We spent time driving around the hills and lakes and Curt did some metal detecting.  

There’s a lake called Mono Lake that is an ancient saline lake. It has no fish; instead it is home to trillions of brine shrimp and alkali flies. In 1941 the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power began excessive water diversions from Mono Basin streams. Mono Lake dropped 45 vertical feet, lost half its volume and doubled in salinity. A committee was formed in 1978 to try to help save the lake. In 1979 the committee took the City of Los Angeles to court. In 1994 the California Water Resources Control Board ordered to let Mono Lake rise to a healthy 6392 feet above sea level – 20 feet above its historic low. Along the lakeshore scenic limestone formations known as tofu towers rise from the water’s surface. Millions of migratory birds visit the lake each year. Mono Lake also has craters nearby. They are volcanoes that have a plug in it. We hiked up to see one of them Panum Crater. Not sure what we were thinking it would be like, but not what it was.  We could have done more hiking but Curt’s knee was bothering him and my back bothering me; what a team we are.

 We drove around June Lake and to Convict Lake. Mammoth Lakes is a town that has Rainbow Falls and multiple small lakes. Also Devils Postpile National Monument is there and Inyo craters, so we thought we’d give it a try. Well, needless to say, we got to see snow and the roads were closed to all the places I wanted to see. Yup, this is getting frustrating.

Monday we stayed at Tri-County Fairgrounds in Bishop, CA. They had full hookups. We were the only “current” RV in the fairgrounds. There were a few others there and campers, but I don’t think they were actually living in them. There were also some boats stored there. They must board horses too, a few corrals. This picture is for Calissa!

We also stopped at the visitor’s center in Bishop and picked up lots of California information and got a geocache. We haven’t gotten to a visitor’s center or information center since we’ve gotten into California so it was good to see this. Too bad we didn’t have it before I found out we couldn’t in to the National Parks.

Sunday night we stayed at Boulder Creek RV Resort, Lone Pine, CA.  We found out that we can’t get in to the  national parks like we had thought. We’re on the east side of the mountains instead of the west. Good mapping skills. I know we were looking for roads that would be easier for the RV (California has bus and RV maps online), but never paid attention that there weren’t east-west roads through the parks. There is through Yosemite, but so far that road is closed; so, I’ll keep on eye on that. We’re also noticing that a lot of the campgrounds don’t open until middle of May or June either. We talked about going to Death Valley National Park from here; it’s over 100 miles one-way and today would be 103 degrees. This is not sounding promising.