Thanksgiving Road Trip Part I

John and I spent our Thanksgiving holiday road tripping back up to the Eastern Sierra Nevada's. We stayed in Bishop, same place as last year, and did short day trips from there. We were lucky in that the higher elevations got lots of snow so we actually got to play in falling snow, something we haven't done in years! Ah, it's the little things in life. :)

Day One: North on the 395 past Crowley Lake, Mammoth Lake all the way up to Lee Vining. We were within 13 miles of Yosemite Park, but the Tioga Pass (the road that would take us over the Sierra's into the park) was closed for the season. We decided to check out Bodie, a western ghost town instead.

Turning off the highway it was a slow, windy 12 mile drive out into the middle of nowhere. It was a little eerie being so far out, but John's Tacoma was so clutch and we kicked into 4wd and were all good.

We walked around in the snow and took some pictures and were really glad that we didn't live out in Bodie, now or 100 years ago. I red that they have -20 degree winters and over 100 degree summers; only gold could possess people to want to live out there.

On the drive back to Bishop, we stopped off at Mono Lake. This was probably one of, if not the highlight of the trip for me. I thought the lake was just a lake but it's actually a sister lake to Salt Lake in UT and is nearly 3 times as salty as the ocean! No fish can survive in the water, but brine shrimp and algae thrive. On the south shore tufa towers jute out of the water.

A break in the clouds brought us a rainbow...you can kind of make it out in the distance.

Tufa towers

These are limestone towers that form when underwater springs are exposed when the water level in the lake drops. It's pretty bizarre and very cool...who knew I was going to learn so much!!!

California is soooo cool.