Don’t you love stumbling across something random on Google Maps while planning your road trip and it ends up being awesome?

We checked out of our motel in Lake Tahoe around 6AM, explored Sand Harbor Beach for a few hours, and drove three hours on 395 to Hot Creek Geologic Site. This was Saturday of Labor Day weekend 2023.

On our way, we stopped at the scenic overlook of Mono Lake, had a stranger take this cute photo of us, and stopped at the Mono Basin Visitor’s Center. We hoped to kill some time here since it’d started raining.

We pulled off the highway and onto the loooong bumpy gravel road, following the signs to the parking lot for Hot Creek. (There are bathrooms here!)

We walked the downward paved path into the valley, where there are several boiling pools surrounding a river. It was so cool! There were a ton of people fishing here.

I seriously fell in love with all thing geothermal during this trip (and as I’m writing this, we’ll be in Yellowstone in five days!), so needless to say everything I saw here blew my mind.

We walked the path along the river which is dotted with tons of random boiling mud pots and weird looking rocks.

It was still raining so as soon as we saw everything, we pretty quickly turned around and headed back to the car to dry off.

It was at this point that we realized we needed to make a plan for the next day. We’d brought no rain gear on the trip and we planned to be in Yosemite National Park the next morning where this rain was definitely going to continue, but was forecasted to be much worse.

We drove into the town of Mammoth Lakes and were surprised by sooo many Labor Day sales going on. We stocked up on new jackets and waterproof pants and were so grateful to have found everything we needed at the last minute.

We ate the best food of this road trip in this town at a small Mexican restaurant named Puerto Vallarta, and then I got pulled over on our way to our next motel stop for the evening. But luckily the police officer ended up being so friendly, and I think he got a kick out of looking at my driver’s license when he saw it was from Maryland.

We stayed the night at Murphey’s Motel in Lee Vining, California and fell asleep to a really pretty sky. We were right across the street from the iconic Mono Cone ice cream parlor.

To learn more about Hot Creek:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/inyo/recarea/?recid=20414
https://www.visitmammoth.com/trip-ideas/exploring-hot-creek-geologic-site/
https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/long-valley-caldera/science/long-valley-caldera-field-guide-hot-creek-geologic-site

Puerto Vallarta mexican restaurant:
https://www.yelp.com/biz/puerto-vallarta-mammoth-lakes

Book your stay at Murphey’s Motel:
https://murpheysyosemite.com/

Check out Mono Cone:
https://www.yelp.com/biz/mono-cone-lee-vining