Saturday, July 13 and packed up again ans headed for California. We headed to Coleville, California and parked at the Meadowcliff Resort.After we set up camp we were off exploring. We headed down Highway 395 and came upon Mono Lake, one of the oldest continuously existing lakes on the continent. Fed by huge glaciers during the last Ice Age, Mono Lake was 60 times larger than the 66 square miles it covers today.
Mono Lake is naturally salty and alkaline because it has no outlet. The only way water leaves is via evaporation. The Sierra streams that flow into Mono contain only trace amounts of minerals and salts but those minerals and salts stay and their concentrations grow over the years.
The lake's most distinctive feature is it's eerie tufa (pronounced "toofah") towers visible along much of the shoreline - mineral structures created when fresh-water springs bubble up through the lake's alkaline water. Some of these tufa towers are up to 30 feet high.
Mono lake may seem lifeless, however, Mono supports a simple but amazingly productive food chain. It begins with algae that serves as food for two other species - bring shrimp and brine flies which, in turn, serve as the major food source for literally millions of water birds. It's estimated that some 85% of California's seagulls started their life here at Mono Lake.The City of Los Angeles, hundreds of miles to the south, has been diverting water from the Mono Basin since 1941. That diversion had cut the lake volume in half and has doubled its alkalinity and salinity. An extended court fight has finally stopped the water diversion and Mono Lake is once again growing - albeit slowly.
Who knew????
More later, but this was very interesting!
Until later, Candy and Johnny on the road.....
