10 Hours in Lee Vining
Jun. 18th, 2022 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI wrote last night about our late arrival in Lee Vining. Doing a "Friday Night All The Way" thing didn't work out quite as well as I planned because I didn't sleep well. The bed was uncomfortable, the pillows were uncomfortable, and the room temperature changed a lot on its own. Like, at 5am it suddenly got really warm, so warm that I woke up sweating and kicked off most of the blankets for the rest of the night.
Lee Vining is a small town, population just a few hundred, so we didn't expect the Four Seasons... or even the Hilton. It was basically a serviceable, basic room. Aside from the rock-hard pillows and the lack of any heat or noise insulation. Though it did cost $200. Tourist area weekend prices. Easily the worst value I've ever gotten for $200.
Speaking of tourist area prices, this was a gas station near our hotel....
People in other parts of the country are howling about $5 gas, here we've got $8 gas. I'm glad we didn't need to fill up in Lee Vining. Update: Mammoth Lakes, where we went Saturday night, was a bit cheaper but still over $7/gal.
We rolled from our hotel in Lee Vining around 10am and drove to Black Point on the north shore of Mono Lake. It's a volcanic area where there are strange fissures in the ground. I'll share pictures and trail notes about that later. This was the one part of Friday Night All The Way that worked; it was an easy drive there in the morning, so it didn't matter that we only left the hotel around 10. Another way in which All The Way worked is that we got some altitude acclimation. Lee Vining is at approximately 6,700' elevation. That made today's hiking less difficult than it otherwise might have been.
Lee Vining is a small town, population just a few hundred, so we didn't expect the Four Seasons... or even the Hilton. It was basically a serviceable, basic room. Aside from the rock-hard pillows and the lack of any heat or noise insulation. Though it did cost $200. Tourist area weekend prices. Easily the worst value I've ever gotten for $200.
Speaking of tourist area prices, this was a gas station near our hotel....
People in other parts of the country are howling about $5 gas, here we've got $8 gas. I'm glad we didn't need to fill up in Lee Vining. Update: Mammoth Lakes, where we went Saturday night, was a bit cheaper but still over $7/gal.
We rolled from our hotel in Lee Vining around 10am and drove to Black Point on the north shore of Mono Lake. It's a volcanic area where there are strange fissures in the ground. I'll share pictures and trail notes about that later. This was the one part of Friday Night All The Way that worked; it was an easy drive there in the morning, so it didn't matter that we only left the hotel around 10. Another way in which All The Way worked is that we got some altitude acclimation. Lee Vining is at approximately 6,700' elevation. That made today's hiking less difficult than it otherwise might have been.
After hiking the fissures we came back through Lee Vining. It was around 12:30, so time for lunch. This old-fashioned burger stand, Mono Cone, was rated well online so we gave it a try. Indeed the food was pretty good, and we enjoyed it at a nicely shaded picnic table in a small garden behind the kitchen.
