I love the eastern Sierras – the escarpment along the 395 Highway corridor – they are so dramatic. The eleven or twelve mile drive from Mono Lake to Tioga Pass is the most extreme contrast I have ever seen. It goes from here (both double clickable to enlarge)

to here

in twenty minutes.

At the bottom is Mono Lake which is really not a lake, but a small, very salty sea, a basin with no outlet. Even at that, Mono is a strange place. For years, I drove by it at top speed on my way to more scenic places. I think that most people drove by it and the City of Los Angeles had siphoned off all the creeks running into it; so the Lake was slowly drying up. In 1978 or so, one guy*, David Gaines, changed this little part of the world.

Shocked and appalled by what he saw, Gaines formed the Mono Lake Committee and started talking to everybody – the conservation
community, politicians, schools, service organizations, anybody he could corner – about the wonder of this forgotten lake/sea. Now there is a big Visitor Center overlooking the lake; the small town of Lee Vining – also overlooking the lake – is full of tourists, many of them from Europe; and Los Angeles is no longer sucking the lake dry. 

From the bottom, looking up, the Sierras don’t look very impressive.

At the bottom of the road, Forestry Service fire engines are waiting for directions.

But, then, the road just starts up,

Past a pine level, and past rock outcroppings where the seeps run all summer long and the hanging flowers always seem to be blooming.

Running into and then along a glaciated valley to the East gate to Yosemite National Park – where, now, there is always a line – at the gate, that is.

It used to be there was no line – because all the receipts from the gate were turned over to Washington to put in the General Fund – now Yosemite gets to keep most of the receipts and the National Park service the rest. Now, the rangers religiously man the gates.