wake up glimpse of Lake Mary, which is very pretty.
Proceed to Mono Lake and Bodie. Branch
the visitor center as usual to obtain information on the surroundings. We choose to start with Bodie that closes earlier.
Bodie is an old mining town isolated in the mountains about thirty miles from Mono Lake. We call these small towns with wooden houses, ghost towns. Indeed, they were built and settled as quickly as they were dropped. All because of the gold that drew in the second Moitiers 19th century, poker cheats, the bar girls and desperadoes.
Bodie in particular has been partially restored, because as you can imagine the wooden structures are not eternal. Throughout the city and its surroundings are currently classified State Park. :-) While this means a preserved but $ 7 per person + $ 2 for a small 4-page prospectus for guidance.
Good visit is nice but no more, no visit to the small factory which allowed the extraction of gold, no visit to the mine, and no visits to the houses. We see only the outside. It's still a mini whole city that we see: the church, saloon, factory, housing, bank, hotel, fire station, jail (what's left ) school. Go
we will not spend the after noon here. Descending to the Mono Lake. This time we take a different route to a range just outside the park. For a good fifteen miles, we are entitled to a dusty road and dented. And in those moments is rather nice to not have his own car ...
A little later we arrived at the lake. Old over 700 000 years, it is one of the oldest in the USA. It occupies a basin in an upland area hostile semi-desert. In the background we can see the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada. If the lake is also famous in large part for its amazing limestone concretions (13000 years old) who stand on the banks and out of the water, like eternal sentinels. Formed under the surface of the water, they have gradually been exposed when the lake level has dropped. This level drops rapidly since the 60s because of water diversions to cities like Los Angeles, avid consumer of drinking water. Another peculiarity
its salinity is very high. There was no shower or even taps to wash so we were not tempted to dive but it seems that its salinity is comparable to the Dead Sea.
short, it is 20h and we have to take the road to Yosemite. But first we must absolutely buy somewhere a gas bottle for our little kitchen. We decided to stop in a kind of large gas station / restaurant. And obviously there's a party! In the garden, a small concert stage with a band playing rock / country, just ahead filled with people dancing badly but the pace, and then thirty tables filled. Just returned, we are told "there's good beef, good music, you'll have fun!". Besides the fact that there were no canisters here and that everything (ie the other supermarket nearby) would be closed, we decided to stay and eat and taste the atmosphere. Indeed there is good food but a bit expensive, so we stick to the hotdog and slice of pizza before Xavier, with a little culo gratis arrives to negotiate a dish that had not been recovered by the owner. Dining
we talk to a couple a little hippy ultra nice (she is a singer in small parties, he used a small ski shop, they sleep in their pickup). They give us advice to bivouac in the corner. Finally we
reprennons the road before stopping 10 minutes later near the road to sleep.
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