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| Highland Peak in CA |
It's amazing the things you see and learn about when you least expect it. Driving through the High Sierras in Eastern California, we expected to see some beautiful scenery along the way, but we were surprised at how much more aware of our history and our environment we would become. Just as visiting Manzanar was an eye opener of the treatment of some of our own citizens during WWII, visiting Mono Lake was a living example of how we manipulate our environment, only to mess up the ecosystems of an area.
Mono Lake is a large high desert saline soda lake. Having no outlet, high levels of salt accumulated and created an productive ecosystem based on brine shrimp that thrived in its waters, and provided critical nesting habitats for two million annual migratory birds that fed on the shrimp. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began diverting Mono Lake's tributary streams 350 miles south to meet the growing water demands of Los Angeles. Deprived of its freshwater sources, the volume of Mono Lake halved, while its salinity doubled. Unable to adapt to these changing conditions within such a short period of time, the ecosystem began to collapse. Photosynthetic rates of algae, the base of the food chain, were reduced while reproductive abilities of brine shrimp became impaired.
In 1978 The Mono Lake Committee formed to fight for the protection and restoration of Mono Lake. Today, Mono Basin restoration is aimed at restoring natural processes and ecological function. Because water will continue to be diverted to L.A., the Mono Basin resources will not be completely restored. The lake will still be 25 feet lower than its pre-diversion level.
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| 1962, After the lake had dropped 25 vertical feet. | . |
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| 1968 |
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| 1995, Over 40 vertical feet drop. |
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| I took this picture, which still shows that even though restoration has begun the lake is still but a puddle. Notice the salt along the shore. |
Continuing our drive North we cross into Nevada, bypassing Lake Tahoe, and heading
into Carson City where we spend a night in a casino parking lot. Might have been free if we had stayed in the MH, but no, we just had to go inside. We know our limits, so all was well....this is the largest town we have seen since leaving LA, so we wanted to get out and do something.
Mid-morning start (early for us) takes us through Reno and a trek through the mountains toward Sacramento, CA. We like to get parked before dark, so we pull into Dutch Flat Resort in the foothills before reaching Sacramento. Resort must have been someones idea of a joke. When we asked about the laundry mat they advertised, we were told that it burnt down several years back. Guided down a steep hill, we attempted to get level on a dirt site that was anything but flat. It was sunny when we pulled in, but down in the hole where we were parked you could barely even see the sky through the trees, so darkness soon overtook the light making for an early nightfall. And then the rain came. If it wasn't dark and gloomy enough being in this shaded camping hole, the cold rain made it seem like late fall, rather than late spring. As it was determined to rain nonstop for a couple days, we decided to just stay put and work on inside projects until the sun returned....which it finally did in about 48 hours. Before leaving the area, we took advantage of the sunshine to explore a little of the community hidden in the hills east of Sacramento. And of course that meant we should check to see if there were any geocaches in the area....with several to choose from we
we selected what seemed to be an easy 'park and grab'.
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| Red Finds the Geocache! |
Well, for it to be an easy find we sure covered a lot of ground looking for it. However, as many caches do, this one was placed with the objective being to educate about the surrounding area. Once more I learned of human manipulation of mother nature, and how the landscape has changed because of it. In this case, however, I don't feel the concern expressed by the person who hid the cache. The stated concern is about how hydrolic mining created a man made valley with a depth of over 300' where there was not one before. Gold was mined ,here, washing down a quarter million yards of gravel by the Bloomfield Gravel Co. Very little gold was mined, as they were moving twelve million parts of gravel to get one part of gold. Not a great haul for the damage it created in the surrounding area; however I enjoy watching the show 'Gold Rush', so I'm not sure where I stand on this.
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| Beautiful Lake near Dutch Flat |
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| Hanging by it's Roots |
Landing in Sacramento for a couple days we settle into a great little park with a lot of long term park model residents. My hope is to connect with my cousins Dave and Robert while we are here. When I call Dave, he is home from work sick with the flu...not a good start. He ask me to call back the next day and we will hope he is feeling well enough to get together. Calling back the next day, I reach Dave's wife Shayron, and the plan is made to call us back with a time and place to meet for dinner. Unfortunately I never heard back, so I'm thinking they had a lot going on with the kids and we kind of got lost in the shuffle. No problem, we will get back in touch next time we come through....whenever that might be. So after chilling for a couple days in Sacramento and enjoying the beautiful sunny warm weather, we are ready to start on the final leg of our trip to Tahuya, WA.
The Bee-Gals,
Kathy and Kathy
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