Visiting YaYa: Part Two

Because of the impending megasnowstorm, YaYa declared the day after we arrived to be Scenic Driving Day. She happily woke up her brother far before dawn, and we piled into her car to drive just a bit to Mono Lake at sunrise. It was amazing. Mono Lake is a crazy environment, a salty lake in the dessert at the bottom of beautiful mountains. There are crazy rock formations that were created when freshwater bubbled up from hot springs in the lakebed and met the super salty lake water at the vents. The rock formations looks small from a distance next to the mountains, like they might come up to your knees, but when you get close, they tower over your head.

A cold February morning is the perfect time to visit Mono Lake! The sunrise was spectacular! All the reptiles that I’m sure live here were hibernating or resting because the temperature was below freezing. Mono Lake is known for a special prolific breed of fly that spends a large portion of its life swimming in the water, and that fly attracts thousands of birds. There were no birds, but we saw some awesome frozen bird tracks. I was happy that the flies were also hibernating, as I just have no need to see clouds of flies.

We had so much fun exploring! No one else was there at all, so it was really a special time in a unique landscape.