Eastern Sierra Field Trip

This is a photo of tufa from the South Tufa Scenic Area at Mono Lake.

I just got back from this summer's field trip up to the Eastern Sierras. We saw Manzanar, the Lower Owens River Project, various hot springs, Mono Lake, Bodie, Rush Creek, Lee Vining & Lee Vining Canyon (a glacier-carved canyon), and Tuolumne Meadows. I'll post more photos in time...this is a study break. The trip and the company--my classmates and a professor and his wife--were fantastic, but it was sure nice to get home and take a hot shower! My hair still smelled of camp smoke last night.

The tufa posts out in the water are home to several osprey nests, which you can see through binocs or a telescope. They are formed by calcium carbonate precipitates from fresh water springs that bubble into the highly alkaline, carbonated lake. The weather was hot, and the scenery was a little surreal albeit gorgeous. Lots of seagulls bobbed around like bath duckies because of the buoyancy of the water as they ate brine shrimp and brine fly larvae.