ES - Day 5: Bishop to Lee Vining

The Devil Made Me Do It!

I am now a day behind in blogging.  This has come about for a couple of reasons - I tend to fall behind in things and I convinced Nick to upload some of his pictures to Facebook.   Two people sharing a computer on vacation can get a tad tricky.  Good thing we like each other.

Yesterday, which might have been Tuesday, we packed up and checked out of the Comfort Inn in Bishop.  We had an odd conversation with Dave, the manager who promised to get Nick some extra points for the double lockout incidents.  Eventually we took off up 395.

This was our take it easier day. We went to the Devil's Postpile National Monument.  Just before paying our fee, we stopped at Minaret Vista and had a fun lunch looking out over the valley at the cliffs.  Lunch was shipwreck - left overs from the past three dinners.  We've had fridges in each of our rooms and things held up well.  After taking a bunch of photos - I love my graduated neutral density filter.  I'm learning how to position it so the sky and mountains get less exposure while the foliage gets more.  A lot easier than burning and dodging in software.  I used to know how to do this in the lab but not yet digitally. 

We packed up from lunch and headed on down the road, paved, yay!!  From the parking lot, there's a relatively easy half mile walk down to the monument.  When you get there, you look up over all these rocks to see something that looks like a giant made a fence using huge  rock posts.  The formation evolved by a combination first of volcanic lava and second glaciers coming in eons later.  I'm bugging Nick to get this much.  If you're curious, there's a ton of info at the Devil's Postpile website.  In a rare occurrence, Nick said we didn't have to hike up to the top but I decided we should.  The initial steps were tough but once we got the top, you could see that each post really was hexagonally shaped.  Nick went and explored up the trail a bit more while I was photographing.  I had one moment of watching my footing and realizing if I went over the edge, Nick wouldn't know where to look for me.  But I was fine and we decided to finish the loop.  Easier walking and we saw smaller formations.  Nick named one the Reaper's Postpile.  We also walked through an area where the wildfires had hit a few years back and saw new trees growing.

From there, we pretty much just drove on to Lee Vining and checked into our current hotel which is at the edge of town.  Being at the edge of town is easy, it's a short town.  Population is only three digits - I haven't been able to read the sign.   

Coming up Bodie! 


© 2010 Esther A. Heller