Mammoth Lakes, California

Earlier this month we spent a few days at Mammoth Lakes, California.  We drove up from San Diego for a little 5-day road trip, staying 3 nights at the Westin in Mammoth followed by one night at the Dow Villa Motel in Lone Pine on the way home.  Our first day in Mammoth was spent mostly at Devils Postpile National Monument; the next day we wandered around the area checking out the scenery and especially the mountain lakes of the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains.

We started our day with a drive up to Minaret Vista, at 9,265' elevation, to get a view of the Sierras.  There was a forest fire not too far away, so the sky was somewhat hazy.

Without knowing it in advance, we somehow managed to time our visit to some good wildflower viewing.

From Minaret Vista you get a pretty good view of Mammoth Mountain and the gondola to the top.  We rode up there back in May of 2013, and had zero visibility due to the clouds.  We decided to skip it this trip, since the sky was still a bit hazy from the fires.

There is a chain of lakes not very far out of town with some spectacular views.

At Horseshoe Lake we found an area where there is an abnormally large concentration of CO2 coming up from the ground due to a series of earthquakes in 1989 that opened cracks underground.  The result so far is an area of over 100 acres of dead and dying trees.

It's a popular recreation spot, but you don't want to spend a lot of time too close to the ground.  There is a sign explaining what is happening, and reminding you that CO2 is heavier than air.

Lots of people were fishing, this one is down the road aways at Lake Mamie.

The road above provided a nice view of Twin Lakes.

Later we drove down to Twin Lakes and walked around. There were a lot of these bright blue dragon flies.

And a few ducks.

   
Click here to see a few more images.  For some reason I've not yet figured out, the blog software seems to be making the images a bit fuzzy - they look a lot better on the gallery in the link.