Westin Monache Resort Mammoth Mammoth Lakes

... down was good and Mark handled the RV with ease. <br><br>We arrived at the Lower Pines campground, had some lunch and caught the shuttle to the visitors centre. While we were waiting for the shuttle a coyote sauntered past us.The girls received their Junior Ranger worksheets and were very excited to start doing their tasks. We had a tour through the Indian village, napped through the video (hee,hee) and met with a native American ranger ...

Today was our last adventure in the RV before driving it back to Vegas and handing the keys back, which will be quite sad. We headed to Mono Lake which is a huge lake to the east of Yosemite that is filled by underwater springs. The lake is 2.5 times saltier than the sea and about 100 times as alkaline, meaning there are no fish but plenty of other wildlife (here are two clips of the lake and trillions of flying ...

... built&#8221; by volcano activity. It was quite a steep climb on dirt/sand, but it wasn&#8217;t too taxing. It was interesting standing on the volcano rocks, as they are very light and make a &#8220;tinkling&#8221; sound against my feet.<br><br>Next, we visited the South Tufa area on the Mono Lake. Mono Lake is essentially an ancient saline lake, having no fish but brine shrimp and alkali flies instead. There are lots of birds there (but I&#8217 ...

... the time of year I was visitng the area, there no was water coming over the falls so I was a little bit disappointed.<br><br>By the time I got to Mammoth Lakes it was starting to get dark so I found a hotel and went to a nearby bar for some pizza and beer. I made a slight mistake ordering my first beer as they ended up bringing me a massive jug of beer and it cost me $16! By the time I had a couple more regular sized beers I was pretty full so I just went back to my hotel room.

... the mountains and Yosemite was no exception. All the mountain ranges I have seen before have been sedimentary rocks pushed up into mountains by the shrinkage of the earth and the movement of tectonic plates. The Sierra Nevadas are completely volcanic. They are the central cores of ancient volcanoes, and they are not the least bit jagged! They look like what you would get if you pumped concrete out of a vertical pipe and let it set. They are ...

... Lee Vining at 2.00pm and checked into the lodge. Our room wasn't ready so we went for a walk along the street. We caught up on the laundry (one of the pleasures of road tripping) and did some grocery shopping. We cooked our own tea tonight because we finally have a kitchen in our cabin. Internet catch-up and TV will finish off the night for us.

... breath. The kids have been fine, although Tegz has been complaining on generally not feeling well, at bedtime and in the morning. It's very hot here too, and easy to get dehydrated. We had a lovely lunch of walnut bread, garlic bread and salad out on the decking, overlooking the golf course, and then went out to get some food for a BBQ at about 5pm. We stopped by the highway to take photos of the Sherwin Fire that is still burning. We ...

... trees, small grey and black squirrels running from tree to tree, deer grazing quite close to the path, noisy blue jays making their presence felt and woodpeckers bashing away at the trees. I'm not sure if they realised that they were banned from the Sequoias or not ! We spent far longer with the Sequoias than we expected and I regret not a minute of it. We had planned to move on from Yosemite and it was gone 2pm before we set off. We were exiting by a NE road that is prone ...

... own wood for the campfire (ie no scavenging allowed even though we are surrounded by trees &amp; pine cones) and there is no communal kitchen so cooking was going to prove difficult. We did have sleeping bag inners and pillow cases but did not realise the beds had nothing else but a mattress and it should get down to about 5 tonight. Luckily you can hire it all up here for not too much so now we are cosy with a cooker, blankets and ...

... apart from lots of sand and temperatures reaching reaching 115 degrees F! I did a lot of the driving today and am exhusted now! Tomorrow we are going to get up and chill out in the morning and leave after lunch to go and see the Giant trees and a few others things in Yosemite. We are here until Saturday so we have plenty of time to explore.