The morning started briskly, the routine packing and preparations. One car had been burgled during the night. The culprit although well known to the authorities was not brought to justice; he is a Raccoon who often preys on unsuspecting victims.
Our route was to take us from Yosemite to Tonopah; this took us over the Tioga Pass, which had only been cleared of snow less than a week before, to the town of Lee Vining.
Tioga Pass took us up to 10k feet, well into the snow line. There were frozen lakes, eight-foot piles of snow where the ploughs had gone through and deep lying snow under the forests of pines. The light was crystal clear and the views when the forest broke were breath taking.
Lee Vining has Mono Lake, a highly saline remnants of an inland sea. The lake has very unusual lime stone structures rising from its surface called Tufa, which are the home to amongst other things Ospreys.
It was only in Lee Vining we found out that we had, as a group, suffered our first mishap. One of the Morgans had driven over a rock on the road and badly damaged the sump; a repairable problem, but they will have drive six hundred and fifty miles to catch up.
The drive from Mono Lake to Tonopah takes the traveller through a variety of changing landscape including pasture, scrub and rough desert. The road, however, remains ruler straight for up to twenty-five miles when a slight curve interrupts and the process begins again. It is not boring; the farmsteads, barns, small towns, road signs riddled with bullet holes (some quite good grouping!). There was a town advertising hot springs that was completely abandoned.
The mileage signs to Tonopah gradually reduced the distance until we hit the city limits. Tonopah is a silver mining town that saw its peak of prosperity in the nineteen twenties. It has kept some of its old style covered walk ways and the hotel we stayed in was charming, it swayed slightly when ever a lorry went by and had out side staircases, one of which was out of use after it was badly damaged by a car running into it.
Tomorrow another adventure!
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