21.4.2012 – 21.4.2012  28 °C

After an ordinary complimentary brekky (the special for today was choc chip pancakes?) we left dumpsville, South Tahoe and headed south along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Today was an absolutely gorgeous drive.. this side of the SN is much drier so the landscape was more desert-ified but with still with the craggy snow capped mountains.. The contrast was really breathtaking.

First stop today was at another ‘town that time forgot’ called Bridgeport. The town was so quiet that we almost felt like we had to whisper whilst we had our smoko.. No kidding, today is Saturday, the temp is really pleasant, sun is shining and we saw two people and one car in the whole town…. Not even a dog barking.. amazing! We could only conclude that everyone had left town and gone fishing or something!!

We had stopped in this town with the plan to go hunting some hot springs that we had heard via google were close by. After a false start (we walked the wrong way up Buckeye creek) we found the natural hot springs. The water was flowing out of the side of the mountain and falling down into shallow pools near the creek. The water coming out of the mountain was probably +50 deg and the water in the creek was just above freezing so you had to find just the right spot in the pool!

Our cheese, salami and cracker lunch today was in one of the most picturesque spots. Mono Lake is this volcanic lake in the middle of no-where that is a beautiful turquoise colour surrounded by snowy mountains! Just beautiful! (I know I’ve been overusing that word for this whole blog time in the US but honestly this part of the country is really spectacular) It could be a big call but I think that maybe Mono Lake is more beautiful than Tahoe (which two days ago I thought was probably the most beautiful lake I had ever seen!)

We continued to wend our way down the eastern SN and stopped in at Mammoth Lakes for a squiz. ML is another of the big ski areas here in California and apparently last yr they skied right up until the 4^th July Holiday!!!!! They won’t have that sort of luck this yr as it is really warm today, will be hot tomorrow and was warm yesterday so the snow is melting rapidly.. Believe it or not we were on the hunt for a pair of shorts as we’d seen the weather forecast for tomorrow and we knew that tomorrow it is likely to be well above 35 deg!!! Yikes! (So much for not needing our warm weather clothing for a while!) Surprisingly, ML has a small outlet centre where we all managed to pick up some shorts for under 20 bucks… Ski resort and you can buy shorts! J

The final part of our journey was more beautiful vistas, as the sun slowly sank its way westward into the mountains! Our stop for the evening was at this tiny motel run by a real character in Independence. We had our dinner outside watching the sun set into the SN.. Glorious end to a glorious day!

Song of the Day– Beatles, Here comes the sun