Month: June 2026

Another sunny day in Lee Vining dawned this morning. After a restful night, Stephanie and I woke early again. (We’re both habitual early risers.) After getting dressed, we sat out on our room’s back deck and ate yogurt we had purchased last night. Then we got rolling.

Our first birding spot was back towards Tioga Pass a short distance: Lee Vining Canyon. We turned off on a side road, drove a little ways and then parked just off the road. We were in a mixed conifer and poplar forest with a large creek running by. It was a beautiful spot and there were a few birds around, although they tended to hide and were difficult to see well or identify.

Then we drove further south, through the June Lakes Loop area and down to a place called Obsidian Dome, where a huge amount of obsidian rock had been deposited by volcanic activity. It was interesting to see the obsidian and the surrounding pine forest, but as far as birds, it was fairly quiet.

Turning north again, we went to a high viewpoint that’s south of Lee Vining and were awed by the view of the Sierra Nevada mountains with very little snow, and the Mono Lake Basin.

By that time, it was late morning and we were getting hungry. We went to the most famous restaurant in Lee Vining, the Whoa Nelly Deli, located at a Mobil gas station/mini mart. It’s famous for delicious fish tacos and mango margaritas, so that’s what we ordered. We ate them outside in a grassy area with picnic tables shaded by trees. The food was great, the drinks were large, and the temperature and setting were pleasant. (Sorry, no pics of the food or gas station.)

After a rest back at the hotel room, at mid afternoon we set out again, this time to see what birds might be in Lundy Canyon, just north of the town. A creek ran through this canyon too, but much of the water was temporarily diverted by beaver dams, creating a nice wetland. We walked along a gravel road beside the wetland to see what birds might be there. One of the birds we spotted high above us, soaring next to a mountain, was a Golden Eagle.

It was quite hot in the canyon, so as we drove back to Lee Vining, we stopped to get ice cream cones from the store next to our hotel and then enjoyed them while sitting in the shade in the hotel’s garden.

To finish off the day, we drove to the south end of Mono Lake, first to a historic site where pine trees had been cut, milled and placed on a train that went to the mining town of Bodie in the late 1800s. The wood supported the booming mining industry and population of Bodie at its peak. Then we visited the calcium carbonate tufa formations on the south shore of Mono Lake and saw a few California Gulls catching and eating the alkali flies that thrive in the extremely salty water of the lake. The shoreline was black with the flies, which hatch underwater and crawl out.

By this time, we were running low on energy due to the heat and elevation so we headed back to the hotel where we ate leftovers that we had stashed in the room’s fridge.

Today was the first full day of a birding trip to California for Stephanie and I. We flew into Fresno yesterday evening, rented a car and drove to Madera, a city about 30 minutes north. That’s where we spent the night, at a La Quinta Inn.

Then early this morning we got up, got ready, and we were out the door by 6 a.m. because we planned to drive through Yosemite National Park before the crowds of visitors slowed down the drive. And we did beat the crowd. The drive through the park was beautiful and not congested. We only stopped a couple of times in the park and one of them was at Olmsted Point, where we had an awesome view of Half Dome.

Exiting Yosemite on the eastern side, we drove through Tioga Pass and then quickly descended to the small town of Lee Vining, next to Mono Lake. The elevation of Tioga Pass is more than 9,900 feet and Lee Vining is about 6,300 feet and we made that descent in about 15 minutes.

There are only about 200 residents in Lee Vining, but the town was buzzing with lots of visitors because it was the end of the Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua, an annual birding festival that attracts lots of birders. We stopped for lunch in town at Mono Cone, where we ordered burgers and milkshakes and ate outside at a picnic table. The weather was comfortable in the shade with a temperature in the high 70s.

Just outside of town is a Forest Service visitor center, where we stopped for information and for great views of Mono Lake. The water in the lake was glassy smooth and it was quite warm.

Then we drove north to the state historical park of Bodie, now a ghost town but once a bustling mining town in the 1880s. We walked around the town, looking in the windows along with quite a few other tourists.

On the way back to Lee Vining, we stopped at Virginia Lake Resort, a rustic old cafe and store set on the edge of a lake. A lady birder saw our binoculars and greeted us in the parking lot, inviting us to see some Gray-crowned Rosy Finches, which aren’t too common, and Mountain Bluebirds, at the store’s bird feeder. We saw these two species plus some red Cassin’s Finches, and several different types of squirrels and chipmunks under the feeder as we sat in the shade and drank a soda. It was a pleasant way to cool off and slow down.

After that cool interlude, we drove back into Lee Vining and checked into our hotel, the Lake View Lodge. We walked over to the lodge’s restaurant, ordered dinner, and ate outside in the shade of their trees while watching birds overhead.

After dinner, we took one more drive out for some evening birding at DeChambeau Ranch, a ways out on a gravel road neat Mono Lake. It is an old ranch, now abandoned and probably owned by the Forest Service. We were alone there as the sun set behind the mountains. But before it did, we saw and heard several kinds of birds, including a Common Nighthawk, catching flies as it flew overhead.

It was a beautiful day with lots of interesting sightseeing and good birding.