Our Current Travels

Friday, September 4, 2009

Mono Lake, CA








This first picture is of a sunset over the Sierra Nevada Mnt range with a shooting star (boy was that hard to catch).

We have been a lot of places and seen a lot of wonderful things. However most of the places we have been to I have heard about or read about (DA....that's why we went), until here. This was just a place we passed on the road (US 395) to June Lake/ Mammoth Lakes CA. Never heard about it, never saw pictures about it and never heard the story of the lake before. Nothing..Just a sign on the road (which said Tours 10, 3 and 6). So we went back at 6. And what a place. The most picture perfect place yet. But it wasn't natural. And it is a sad story, with the beauty coming from mans needs, which never takes into account the devastation he can do. The story goes that in the 40's, Los Angeles was buying all the land around Mono Lake. (they needed drinking water. They then diverted all the natural water from the winter snow melt which used to go into Mono Lake to the faucets of the citizens of LA. Well in 20 years this lowered the lake 45 feet. 45 feet! This exposed the natural wonders of the lake. A lake very similar to The Great Salt Lake, which has no outlet, (which causes the salt effect). Well Mono Lake is a little different in that something in its chemical make up causes these strange looking growths to happen underwater. And with a 45 foot drop in lake level, you get these picture perfect growths. Well the story goes that a couple of hippies from San Fran showed up in the 70's (Haight Ashberry was over ya know) and they became concerned about the lake level dropping so they took up the fight.The birds, the natural habitat of the lake was dieing. And after 20 years in the courts, it was agreed to re establish the lake level to a certain level, and that just because you own the land, you don't own the water. Power to the People! What are we doing now that is gonna cause problems in the future? What a fine line we live in.

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