In Mono Basin

Ellery Lake, Tioga Road

 We drove out of the Sierras and in hours we descended four thousand feet. We passed Tenaya lake but it was cold so we did not stop and then we drove through Tioga Pass at ten thousand feet. I stood with Ellery Lake 20 feet below me and photographed the mountain and the water which glittered in the sunrise. 
Yosemite was a dream behind me and I touched the slimy, sodium filled water of Mono Lake at the outer foot of the Sierras. The landscape was sparse and barren and the strange Tufa Towers were like large drip-sand-castles and interested me far more than the giant trees of the Mariposa Grove. Blue water met monoliths and yellow rabbitbrush flowers at the base of the hostile mountains in a way that alienates this valley from Yosemite Valley. 
We left the lake and proceeded south and to our left loomed another wall of mountains and behind them lays Death Valley. The road veered west and the mountain before us and behind the desert valley, though not as high as the Sierra-Navada, stood dark and foreboding   unlike the face of El Capitan, which even from the sheer cliff of Taft Point is a kind and familiar face or Half Dome, which can be picked out at Sentinel Dome like a friend in a crowd.   

Mono Lake, Tufa Towers, and Rabbitbrush

We stopped at the southern end of the Sierras for fries and ice cream at a ranch house restaurant that sold nothing else but meat. Then we were moving fast through the 100 mile desert that must be hiked in five days when it is crossed by Pacific Crest Trail hikers because there are no cities to replenish food supply. I saw the occasional Joshua Tree and once when we stopped for gas a tumbleweed trapped by a fence and abandoned when the wind stopped. There was a moist breeze uncommon in the dry region and many clouds overhead when we left and continued on our desert road.