Transitions

Our trip began in familiar territory: the eastern Sierra. We’ve had 3 days in our favorite campground, going to new places and revisiting Mono Lake and other loved spots. It has been a good way to begin; getting the kinks out of how to live in a tiny space (solutions: neatness counts and so does taking turns), finding rhythms that work for our daily chores and making mistakes that we won’t make again: driving off with the coffee on the roof, driving off with the rear hatch wide open, and nearly turning south onto north bound 395 (all in a 2 hour span). But tomorrow (today when this is posted) the “real” trip begins. We set off on a road that neither of us has traveled before to a place we’ve never been. We head south on 395 to Bishop and then turn left (east) onto US Hwy 6 with the destination of Great Basin National Park which has the distinction of the least visited national park in the USA.

The past 2 days we visited sites that affirm the volcanic origin of this area. Hot creek is so named because there are boiling pots of sulfuric water that line the sides of the creek and, actually, some pop up in the creek. Then there is the obsidian dome, a place where the volcano oozed it’s molten glass and formed a mountain of glass as it cooled. Another transition- liquid to solid, deep earth to surface.