East Side Sierra Trip Report, second half:
Saturday night we visited Whitmore Tubs near Mammoth. Unfortunately Shepherd's was cold, without enough inflow of hot water. So we went to another pool and had one of those rare instances of meeting a weirdo while in the backcountry. While soaking in the tub, some dude pulled up in an International, blasting us with his headlights. He was obviously high on something and began to badger me with questions about where we were from, etc. He basically wanted to pick a fight (at a hot spring???). After making no sense and even threatening to F me up, he drove off. Sad, and disappointing to me to have my girlfriend be exposed to this lunacy. We warned the next visitor, a nice normal guy, that there was a strange guy to look out for. We decided it would be best to leave the area and headed for Mono Lk.
We went looking for the site that MarkBC shared with us on his recent posts, but went the loooong way. I thought it would be fun to use the McPherson Grade to approach the camping area, instead of taking the short road from 120. Big Mistake: the brush got as tall as my camper and got tighter and tighter. I've got some nice brush burn on the side of my truck now. That's what it's for, I guess. It was a quiet night and we were glad to be by ourselves.
The camper was quite warm with my new reflectix insulation package. Temps were dropping and the wind kicked up as we headed down to the lake for a hike to some tufa formations.
I used my sigma 12-24mm for landscapes
We went into Lee Vining and into the eye of the storm. The strongest winds I've felt with the camper on had me slowing down to 40mph. We pulled into the Mono Lk Visitor Center to regroup and check the radar on my Droid phone.
Suddenly a metal dumpster flipped over and started rolling! I started my truck and was ready for evasive maneuvers.
We decided that Conway Summit and 395 north would be a foolish direction so we turned our back to the storm, like good sailors, and outran the weather heading east towards Hawthorn. It got sunny and we put on shorts again.
Next time I'll take the road from Pole Line (Mono Lk) to Bodie, then to Fletcher. I just didn't want to try it in the crazy weather and I read a post by DD that said it was a challenging road. Need a bit more info on that one.
We wanted to go over Lucky Boy Pass, south of Hawthorn. We had been there last month to visit the East Walker River Hot Springs (yes, we are addicts!). The road down was a lot easier this time, knowing I wouldn't get high sided. We had the whole canyon to ourselves and had a wonderful night.
I got out the tripod and did some 30 sec exposures.
Monday was our last day. I wanted to visit Rosachi Ranch on the East Walker and get my fly rod out.
Again, we had the place to ourselves, marveling at rock walls stacked along the volcanic outcrops.
I only had two hours, so I switched from dry fly to dry with trailing nymph pattern, finally to a wooly bugger and
split shot. Bingo! Suddenly I picked up a couple of smaller browns. In the next hour I caught a total of five trout: one rainbow, and four browns. Nice to know I still have the touch since I rarely fish much these days.
No that's not a fly rod growing out of SR's head!
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Mods that worked for us this trip:
Like the new suspa lifters, but the 40# lift is a bit strong w/o anything on the roof.
Like the 24" roll of reflectix that I cut and fitted with velcro. Makes a HUGE difference. Wouldn't cold camp w/o it.
Like the pull-out ramp I made for my old lab. It beats lifting a 60# dog every time.
To do:
Find coffee cups that don't dump (twice!) on my upholstery when I hit the brakes!
Get small flexi tube so I can fill up Zodi (nickname: Bob), so we can fill him up before bringing him into the hot spring with us for a rinse/shower afterwards.
