USA 2006: Las Vegas & California
(continued)
(right)
Bodie's Main Street:
- Hotel and Post Office;
- Odd Fellows Lodge;
- Miner's Union Hall;
- Morgue
(right)
The old Methodist Church, erected in 1882
Interior of the Miller House. Tom Miller worked for the Mono Lake Railway & Lumber Co at Mono Mills, south of Mono Lake - much
of the timber used in the construction of Bodie came from the Mono Mills.
(right) The Swazey Hotel, which at various times also
housed a clothing store and a casino. In the background is the Hydroelectric Building and Power Substation. Energy for the mines and mills
was first derived from steam generated by wood-fired boilers. Eventually, however, wood fuel became scarce and uneconomical. Proceeding
on the theory that electricity could be transmitted over wires from a distance, a hydroelectric plant was built thirteen miles away.
In November 1892, the first motor to be operated over long-distance power lines was initiated in Bodie - a world-first, engineering
breakthrough
The snow-capped eastern Sierra Nevada near the town of Lee Vining, our location for three nights commencing June 24th. There
are twenty-one volcanic cores to the south of Mono Lake (below) - they form the youngest mountain range in North America. The most
accessible is Panum Crater, a 640-year-old volcano that we explore by walking round the rim of the crater
June 25th: the blue, sixty square mile expanse of Mono lake sits in the middle of a volcanic desert tableland. It resembles a science-fiction
landscape, with great towers and spires formed by mineral deposits ringing the shores. These strange, sandcastle-like tufa formations
were increasingly exposed from the early 1940s to the mid-1990s as the City of Los Angeles drained away the waters that flow into
the lake. An order to protect Mono Lake and its tributary streams in 1994 has resulted in an increase in water levels in the lake.
Mono
Lake's towers of tufa were formed underwater, where calcium-bearing freshwater springs well up through the carbonate-rich lake water;
the calcium and carbonate combined and sank to the bottom as limestone, slowly growing into these weird formations
(right)
The Tioga Gas Mart - the unlikely location of the magnificent Whoa Nellie Deli, our main eating place whilst staying
three nights in Lee Vining