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This morning (after poor ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) velithya had spent about an hour on the phone with Verizon trying to get our phones to work) we checked out of our motel in Buck Meadows, had breakfast, and headed off towards Mono Lake, via Yosemite National Park.
We set out in buoyant moods, but were soon quite thoroughly sobered as we began to drive through parts of the forest that had been affected by the recent fires. Our light-hearted chatter became comments like, "Looks like here is where the fire jumped the road."
Driving along with burnt-out stands of trees by the road is bad enough, but then you get to the parts of the road where the vistas spread before you, of the hills and mountains normally carpeted with trees and suddenly you see entire hilltops are just blackened and dead, and you realise the air still smells like ash even now.
To me, the smell was strangely alien - I'm familiar with the smell of bushfires, but the Yosemite wildfires burned different woods, and the smell is different, unfamiliar chords behind a painfully familiar melody.
Eventually we reached Yosemite itself. At the park gates the ranger asked us our destination, and we told her we were headed for Mono Lake; she nodded, and handed us a leaflet explaining, more-or-less, that everything was shut. (It will be among the many, many photos I will eventually be posting to elaborate these posts, but I'm too tired to do the photos right now, but want to write about my experiences while they're still fresh in my memory.)
She also warned us that there had been an accident about eight miles ahead, which was also the cause of us missing a turnoff and driving through quite an extensive section of the park that we weren't, technically, supposed to, and then having to turn around. (On the bright side, I got to glimpse Half Dome and Bridalveil Falls.) velithya, who was driving, was edging around the emergency vehicles, and I was in awe of the scenery and also sort of averting my eyes from rubbernecking at an accident scene, and both of us managed to fail even to register that that particular spot was, in fact, a turnoff, and the turnoff for Highway 120 to Tioga Pass at that.
Eventually we realised we were going the wrong way, turned around, and came across a couple of park rangers standing by their parked car and confirmed where we were going with them.
Parts of Yosemite are intact, of course, and are stunningly beautiful. But there are such swathes of destruction still left from the fires that I would struggle to comprehend if I hadn't seen them - hell, I did see them, and I still struggle to comprehend them.
I wonder if it might not have been worse still were it not for Yosemite's extensive collection of granite outcroppings - nature's own firebreaks that are just not going to burn.
I think I missed appreciating some of the true majesty of some of the taller granite peaks and features of Yosemite - somewhere above 10,000 feet I seem to get a little vague and spacy-feeling. Nonetheless, I can assure you, I appreciate quite a lot of spectacular and majestic scenery today.
Eventually we reached the Tioga Pass, and were waved through by the park ranger at the booth there. We headed onwards, discovering that at least one section of Highway 120 is somewhat terrifying, but I'll go into that more when I post the photos, because I don't know words could do it justice, at least not without at least a full conversion of the thousand words value of a picture.
We got petrol at a station with a sign outside apologising that the government can't do its job, then finally rolled on to the town of Lee Vining. (velithya and I still can't agree on how this town's name is pronounced, and have yet to get around to asking a local.)
We had lunch (and later, dinner) at Nicely's Restaurant before going to the Bronze Bear something-or-other gift/souvenirs/etc shop, outside of which is, well, a bronze statue of a grizzly bear, about eight feet tall, with a cute legend placard behind it. The idea is that you have three tries to put a coin on the bear's tongue and get it to drop into the container below; if you succeed, rub his nose and make a wish.
I had a go. My penny went in on the second try.
After that we checked in to our motel, chilled out for a bit (we'd done a lot of driving), then went down around sunset to see Mono Lake. It's a beautiful and eerie location, although - we discovered - it also smells absolutely disgusting. The water level is low at the moment, so we came down the path and, like other people who were there, walked out across what is sometimes the lake bed to get closer to the water's edge.
And then the wind shifted, and the water started coming off the lake, and we both gagged and hastened to get more distance again after all.
I took some photos I have reasonable hopes for, and then we noticed that we were being swarmed with (at a conservative estimate) ELEVENTY BILLION mosquitoes, and fled outright. We went back to Nicely's for dinner, and then returned to the motel... where we are now.
It turns out that Las Vegas is only 5-6.5 hours away (depending on route), so we're staying here for two nights and then heading to Vegas in one shot rather than going halfway, stopping overnight, then going the rest of the way another day.
This means, I think, that I can skip going into more detail about Mono Lake, because I'm sure we'll have more on the topic tomorrow.Current Location: Lee Vining, California Current Mood:  tired
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