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The Mono Lake effect is wonderfully strange; now is a great time to check it out

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 24, 2008 at 8:59 am

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Down at lake level, paddling a kayak among Mono Lake’s otherworldly tufa towers, you realize that Mark Twain, for once, got it all wrong. Cradled in a “lifeless, treeless, hideous desert … this solemn, silent, sail-less sea - this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on Earth - is little graced with the picturesque,” he wrote in “Roughing It.”

Lifeless? Try telling that to the 2 million birds that nest here - California gulls, eared grebes, American avocets, western and least sandpipers, snowy plovers and white-faced ibises, to name a few - or the 5 billion brine shrimp that form a milky cloud beneath our paddles. Little graced with the picturesque? Tell that to the professional photographers who line up, tripod to tripod, along the shore on any given day.

Granted, Mono Lake might look barren and lifeless from the window of your car as you zip by at 70 mph. But the view from the shoreline, or from the seat of a kayak or canoe, changes everything.

As Twain suggested, the water is so salty and alkaline you could probably wash your clothes by towing them behind your boat. But the dramatic setting - a brooding, volcanic, Tolkienesque landscape - is unlike anything else in California, and you quickly discover that Mono Lake is home to some of nature’s more wonderfully strange creatures, such as alkali flies that plunge into the lake to graze and lay eggs by encasing themselves in tiny bubbles.

Why not try visiting some place a little out of the ordinary, a little unusual? Find out more about why it is a great time to visit Mono Lake, and what you can do while you are there by reading the full text of this article from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here. Find out more about Mono Lake by visiting the Mono Lake Committee website: click here.

May 24, 2008 · Filed Under Owens Valley & Mono Lake