What a way to wake up in the morning. I had left the shade in our bedroom window open in hopes of a good sunrise and we sure got it. Joe woke me up to take a look and I soon ran out to get some pictures.
This is our back view from our great little site. 360 degree views.
Another reason, besides checking out the sunrise, to get up early was to get out on the water for a paddle before the winds come up in the afternoon. We just had a short drive down some unpaved roads and reached our launch site at Navy Beach on the southside of the Lake.
Mono Lake is a large, shallow saline soda lake formed at least 760,000 years ago as a terminal lake in a basin that has no outlet to the ocean. The lack of an outlet causes high levels of salts to accumulate in the lake. These salts also make the lake water alkaline.
This desert lake has an unusually productive ecosystem based on brine shrimp that thrive in its waters, and provides critical nesting habitat for two million annual migratory birds that feed on the shrimp.
It is around 9 miles long and 13 miles wide and has two islands in the middle. We once tried to paddle to one of the islands and paddled and paddled and it never seem to get any closer.
Savannah is checking out the famous tufas. These interesting rock formations are actually a variety of limestone. The ones in Mono Lake are tufa columns that are associated with the saline water of this particular lake and are very unusual. They are just amazing and what an experience to be able to paddle among them.
Like looking at clouds and seeing people and animals, etc in the different shapes, rocks are often named for their shapes. Not sure if this rock has a name, but it sure looks like a guy getting ready to tip his hat or give a little wave, or at least that is what I see.
We enjoyed watching all the birds.
What a sight to watch thousands of birds zooming around the lake , back and forth, always in formation.
Osprey like to built their nests on top of the tufas and with my great little camera, i was able to zoom in on a Mom and her babies. Awesome!
What a great paddle. This place is just made for making some little magic with my photos.
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