Mammoth Vulcanism

8/7/00
I slept in a bit late this morning (9:00), slowly organized the van, and drove down the mountain into Big Pine. The first thing I did was take care of all the van's tanks; dumped the holding tank, got water, got gasoline, and got propane. I also bought postcard stamps and mailed postcards. I headed north on 395 toward Bishop, stopping on the way for a soak at Keough Hot Ditch. Continued into Bishop where I got paper towels and drinking water.

The "check engine" light had come on on my van, so I stopped at the Bishop Chamber of Commerce to ask about VW dealers. There's none nearby, but they sent me to a german import repair shop that repairs lots of VW's. They had a pristine '49 VW Beetle, beautifully restored. There were two big dogs lounging around in the shop, a golden retriever and a large spaniel-looking dog. I brought Pepper inside to meet the shop dogs, since it was too hot for her to wait in the van. The shop had lots of air cooled VW's and a few older water cooled ones, but nothing as new as my van. They offered to read the code for my check engine light, and see what would happen. Unfortunately, their old, simple computer wasn't able to read the code, nor was it able to clear it. So basically, they couldn't do anything to help me. They were very very nice about it, and didn't charge me anything. The guy who worked on my van had an older VW camper himself. We talked for awhile about the intricacies of propane stoves, and tricks to keeping them working right.

So their advice is, I should head toward Reno and see about getting the check engine light diagnosed at a VW dealer. The van seems to be driving fine, and it's probably nothing critical.

I proceeded to Mammoth Lakes, where I checked phone messages (none were there). I drove up to Horseshoe lake, and saw a very interesting area where magma had caused carbon dioxide to build up and come up through the soil along a fault line. The carbon dioxide was at extremely high concentrations, and it was killing the trees. This was a recent phenomenon; within the past decade. Mammoth Lakes is an extremely active area, geologically speaking.

This was all interesting, but the Mammoth Lakes area is too crowded for my taste.

I drove on to Crowley hot springs to spend the night on the east side of highway 395. I met some interesting people, including a professional photographer living in Mammoth Lakes, three women just coming out of a hiking trip in the backcountry, and a Harley Rider with his son and daughter-in-law. He's a bit too much of a respectable memeber of society to fit the stereotype Harley rider, but we talk about the fact that Harley riders rarely do fit that stereotype, since the bikes are too expensive for a vagabond ne'er-do-well to afford.