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Bailey and Andra standing beside the giant tufa towers (pronounced too-fah).  These strange spires and knobs are formed when fresh water springs containing calcium bubble up though the carbonate rich lake water.  The combining of these waters forms calcium carbonate, a whitish limestone deposit that forms the basis of the tufa formations.  It's like having a giant natural Tums factory!

How would you like to be in the presence of millions of flies and none of them are even remotely interested in bugging you?  Sound too good to be true?  Not at Mono Lake.  These algae eating flies would hardly even move as I tried to scare them up for this photo.  These diving flies actually swim down below the water surface to clean algae off rocks and sand.  The flies lay their larva in the lake and the Indians used to harvest these larva for food or to trade with Indians that lived in the Yosemite Valley.  Mmmm protein...

Mono's shoreline.  Hard to believe these tufa towers were once underwater before Los Angeles started diverting all the feeder streams away from Mono.

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