Mono Lake or Friday Fun Day 2

We have often driven past Mono Lake and thought that it would be a fun place to kayak, so when we had spectacular weather Nevada Day weekend Calvin and I decided to take a kayak/fall color trip to the eastern Sierras.  We drove south on Friday afternoon, and although we read that you should never start a kayak trip on Mono Lake in the afternoon because of dangerous winds, we started our kayak trip in the afternoon.

Mono Lake tufa

As it turns out, Mono Lake isn't all that interesting a place to paddle once you have seen the tufa.  We tried paddling toward the island, but it was further than it looked and kind of a slog, so we gave up after a couple of miles and paddled back to shore.

This is the view from the front of the kayak looking toward the island.  It looked like this for a long, long time.

I discovered on a paddling break that if I put the camera on the top of my head pointing backwards it takes a very nice picture of Calvin.  Who needs to frame a shot?

After we finished paddling and started to dry we discovered that we were covered with a pale slippery mud from the lake.  The kayak hasn't been resting under a flock of pigeons, this is Mono Lake splashes.  This may not be a destination we need to kayak twice.

We spent the night at Mammoth Lakes and then visited Convict Lake in the morning.  This is a really pretty alpine lake, but it is heavily used with a walking path all along the perimeter.  This Saturday morning it was swarming with fishermen competing in the last fishing derby of the season and one obligingly took our picture.

I had read in Sunset magazine that this area was a good place to go" leaf peeping" in the Sierra and it probably is a little earlier in October, but most of the leaves were gone by October 29.

In the afternoon we put the boat in at Twin Lake and it was just beautiful.  The water was just like a mirror.

Sadly the wind came up and we decided to be prudent and paddle in.  But it was a beautiful way to end the kayaking season.

Life just doesn't get much better than this.