Ten

The aforementioned downtown street has a astonishingly large number of diner opportunities. There are four restaurants plus two bars. No need to abuse a Sushi bar for fun, then. Although I skip the Italian place, I end up with pasta. But only because having the steak would have cost my the whole mountain climbing bonus. Cheese cake is okay but nothing special. Living downtown, I grab the opportunity and go to one of the pubs.

Now, here’s what you should never do in North America: Go into a pub and ask the bartender for a beer. This will turn into a long a complicated process to figure out what beer specifically. A good strategy if all the names thrown at you don’t mean a thing is to ask what they have on tap. That limits the number to somewhere around half a dozen. I choose a brew called Fat Tire, which proofs that advertisement does work. Almost every bar seems to have its logo hanging in the window.

The bartender asks for my verdict. I disclaim my hesistant ‘Okay’ with a ‘I’m German’ which sparks a discussin about German beers. A bit tricky since I don’t know that much about the subject. Also, try to come up with the name of a popular brand when prompted for one.

Next morning I return to the street I have already run up a bit by accident. It leads to Lake Tahoe, the largest freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada (isn’t Wikipedia nice? You don’t have to take notes during your trip anymore). It is also, together with Yosemite the Sierra’s most visited tourist attraction. For someone who has seen Norway’s fjords, the lake is not that exciting, really. A body of water with mountains around. Little tidbit which I did have to note down: The lake’s only outflow, Truckee River, flows north through Reno into Pyramid Lake, which does not have an outflow but evaporates all its excess water.

More by chance than careful planing do I take the eastern side of the lake and suddenly find myself in Nevada. A look on the map shows that indeed the border goes right across the lake and that it is only stone’s throw to Nevada’s capital. Quiz question: What’s its name? For those who couldn’t care less: Carson City. I gladly take the detour across the mountains and unexpectedly wind up in the desert. Despite that they built a small park into the city center to put the capitol and other state institutions in. Which seems to be pretty much all that there is to see -- the big casino across the street is closed for renovation. So I take a picture of the capitol and am off again.

The road first runs flat along Eagle Valley and then climbs up into the mountains of Sierra Nevada again. Before going even further up towards the eastern entrance of Yosemite National Park and just to make things a little bit more interesting, it decends sharply down to the shores of Mono Lake, a birdwatcher’s paradise. The lake lies along the migration routes of countless species of birds (well, of course they have been counted. Bear with my poor attempts on poetry) which make a rest stop at the lake. I do too, at the Mono Lake County Park. It offers a board walk along which you can walk down to the shore without getting your feet wet. Along it, various posters explain the dilemma of the lake. In 1941 the city of Los Angeles startet to divert water away from the source rivers of Mono Lake. Quickly, the lake started to lose water and is now only three quarters of its original size. Signs mark the various earlier water levels as you walk quite a bit from the original to the current shore line.

At the end of the walk there is a platform with a bench where a family is busy staring through binoculars. As I arrive, father is just commenting: ‘I call them Jesus ducks.’

‘Why Jesus ducks?’ asks son.

After some hesitation mom explains: ‘Some people believe Jesus.’

What? Are there atheists present?

‘… was able to walk over water.’ Puh. That was close.