Leakage from a Cluttered Mind

Today we all packed up and drove out to Bodie, a well preserved (but not restored) ghost town that has become a California State Park. Even Chase was looking forward to it.

We picked up 5 caches along the way, including a virtual and a puzzle. While I was wandering around in one of the back lots I noticed a couple of large birds. As best I can determine they are females of a Mono basin subspecies of sage grouse.

We peered through a lot of windows—not many of the houses are open. It’s amazing how they were left when people moved away. It kind of looks like the folks just vanished, leaving belongings on tables and shelves. I guess it was too hard/expensive to move it. The mine area is off limits except with a guided tour. One of these days I should do that.

After leaving Bodie we stopped at the South Tufa area on the Mono Lake shoreline. These photogenic rock formations form when springs of calcium rich fresh water react with alkaline salt water of the lake. The towers can grow (underwater) up to an inch a year. The reason we see these towers is that the lake level is much lower than it has been historically. There were two earthcaches here that we completed.

Mark and Annmarie and the kids headed for the house, while we took a little hike up to Panum Panorama Revisited. While the crater was interesting, we ran into old friends from southern California (and we nearly didn’t recognize each other—the context was all wrong). How cool to run into Todd and Jennie and family.

I guess the bear didn’t come down the hill after us—at least it didn’t wake us up by knocking over garbage cans. We decided to grab breakfast at the Breakfast Club; so did the rest of the group, so it was a big table.

After breakfast we rolled out to the end of Minaret Road as far as you can without taking the shuttle and then hit dirt up to the real Minaret view, not the paved parking area.

This was a pretty drive to over 10,000 ft to Hardcore Ezakimak (D3 T5). The Minarets, Banner, and Ritter were in clear view to the west.

Back down the road just a bit and we found Hardcore Sunrise or Sunset (D1.5 T5).

Before we got back to pavement we got Minaret Summet (sic) (D2.5 T2) and then we headed to Laurel Canyon, a rocky, intermediate 4×4 road. Using a bit of discretion, I parked the Ridgeline and hitched a ride.

Here’s the view looking back down the canyon toward Mammoth. The timbered ridge down at the mouth of the canyon has burned. The fire started the day after this photo was taken.

Bypassing a couple of the caches lower in the canyon, we climbed up a very rocky, rough, narrow, shelf road. We were riding in the back seat of Tom’s Toyota Forerunner and got bounced around a lot. One bounce I was not prepared for about knocked me silly as my head got whacked against the side window. Finally, we stopped at a beautiful little spot along the creek in a grove of Aspens to find Laurel Creek.

Then it was farther up the canyon, with switchbacks up the canyon wall, and a stop, of course, at Laurel Lake Switchback.

Finally, we reached the upper end of the road and had a view of Laurel Lake while we found Laurel Lakes.

Then we dropped down to the lake, found Ode to Ranboze and bthomas (D4.5 T5), relaxed while eating lunch, and some even did a bit of fishing.

On our return, we picked up Veet Voojagig’s Ballpoint Planet: Wormhole#1 Ca. (D1.5 T5) and Mammoth View Cache (D1.5 T3).

After returning to the base of Laurel Canyon, the group was headed off toward Bishop, but since it was 2PM we decided to stay around Mammoth and check-in to our vacation rental house at 4PM. This left us some time to find another couple of caches.

We did 8.5 Panorama (on a nearby hill with lots of exposed, sharp obsidian at the top)—it’s a seismic station, hence the 8.5 references earthquake magnitude. No doubt this general area is not through shaking or erupting.

After completing the photo for the virtual The Hidden Dragon, we drove into Mammoth, did grocery shopping, and went to the rental house off of Old Mammoth Road.

We rented this 5 bedroom, 3.5 bath house through VRBO. This always seems like an adventure in trust to me, but I tried to check out the owners as best I could, and it seemed quite legit. The house was larger than we needed, but since each family got a separate floor, it worked out well. It was in a very quiet neighborhood, rather than a townhome (which we could have rented) in the busy part of Mammoth.