I woke up this morning covered in grit with the tent flapping wildly over my head. It’s a full blown wind storm that broke a tent pole allowing the fly to flap and sand to blow in. We dress, break camp, and quickly leave. It’s far too windy to cook breakfast. Our Nemo tent is quite sturdy and the broken pole appears to be user error–in our rush to set up last night we did not push that pole all the way into the hub.
Wild turkeys, including an albino one, strutted through our camp this morning while we were packing. Several deer also hovered just a few feet away.
We ate a huge breakfast at the Hotel Nevada in Ely, Nevada and continued on to California. On our previous trip to Great Basin we took a dark sky star gazing excursion on the historic steam train.
Stopped at the Tufa Reserve at Mono Lake to walk among the erie columns. Like all of California, the lake level was extremely low.
Once again we applied the flexibility rule and stayed in a Motel in Lee Vining to avoid making camp in the dark in the Sierras. We ate dinner at Nicely’s.
