more from the field trip

This is a photo of the cemetery at Manzanar, which is a historic site now part of the national park service. That's Mt. Williamson in the background (i think); Mt. Whitney is just a tad bit south.

There are more graves in the cemetery than people actually buried there, but more people died in the camp than are buried there too. I guess family members came and got the remains to rebury them closer to home. One of the internees designed the monument, and many people come to pay homage to the dead: there are paper cranes, coins, and other paraphernalia on the fence and around the markers.

Manzanar is definitely worth a stop if you're on your way to Mt. Whitney, Mammoth or the Sierras from SoCal! For one thing, the exhibit is incredibly informative and has lots of artifacts to look at, including a model of the housing and the entire camp. The exhibits are also air-conditioned, and there are clean bathrooms and great-tasting drinking fountains. And it's free! What more does one need for a great stop on a long trip?

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.