Click on images below to enlarge:
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| Highway 156
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| San Luis Reservoir, which we admire every time we drive to L.A.
| The hills here are now brown, quite a contrast to the lush green we
saw and photographed on our March trip.
| | Near the water's edge are sprouts of green amid patches of white. I
guess the latter is clay, as it cannot be salt. You can see an example
of what I'm talking about on the island in the left of the picture.
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| Lovely rolling hills, again quite a contrast to the March
photographs.
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| Highway 5
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| Wavy, parched land as seen from highway 5. Although this is on the
scale of thousand of feet, I can imagine seeing the sand or dirt a
couple of feet wide on the beach or in a creek.
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| Pyramid Lake
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| The dam/power station near Pyramid Lake.
| Pyramid Lake. Note the sheriff rescue boats in the foreground.
Also notice that I took this shot standing on the sheriff's helipad.
| Di Yin trotting down one of Pyramid Lake's many piers. Don't miss the
jet-skiers. There were also water-skiers, but I didn't end up
photographing them.
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We stopped by the beach and found it fairly rocky.
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| More Pyramid Lake. Obvious how far it extends in the distance. It then
curves farther around.
| We sat and ate a snack. Incidentally, there are lots of similar picnic
areas, most empty.
| Because we couldn't see the eponymous Pyramid from this part of the
lake, we drove around it to explore more. This shot is from the moving
car; I like the look of the landscape in the distance.
| Passing another tendril of the lake.
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| | | Another road, another part of the lake.
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| Driving down to this edge of the lake.
| An island.
| Another view of the island, but the road to the shore was closed.
| On the way back up, we stopped and I took this panorama of this section
of Pyramid Lake. I think it conveys the scene very well.
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| I also took a close-up of the island.
| Yet more shots taken from a moving car. Note they we haven't yet
managed to get a view of the Pyramid part of the lake. Thus, I had my
camera at ready as we got back on the highway because I knew that it
was visible from the highway (and since we haven't seen it yet then it
must be coming soon).
| There it is: in the center of the picture, the pyramid/triangle end of
the ridge that gives Pyramid Lake its name.
| Another shot of Pyramid Lake's pyramid as we sped past it on the
highway.
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| Dinner at KyoChon
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| Our first dinner stop, KyoChon, which I've
visited previously. It's at the edge of a strip mall in Koreatown.
| Inside. You order from a counter.
| The drumsticks with soy-garlic coating were as good as last time (quite
a compliment).
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| Dessert at Hwa Sun Ji
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| We went to Hwa Sun Ji, a traditional Korean tea shop for pat-bing-soo.
| Inside. I love the interior design. It feels open and well-lit, yet
the bamboo screens give a sense of privacy and coziness.
This was definitely a Korean place--although full, I heard only Korean,
no English.
| Our pat-bing-soo: soft shaved ice (hidden at the bottom), sweetened red
beans, diced melons, ground peanuts (I think), mochi (the few white
things), green tea ice cream, and a bit of condensed milk. Very good.
There was a nice texture contrast among all the ingredients. The flavor
mostly came from the red beans, which were of good quality ("sweet and
glutinous," Di Yin said). The mochi, by the way, I wouldn't have
noticed if Di Yin hadn't pointed them out. Di Yin said the mochi wasn't
as good as the mochi at Charmant (a place in Shanghai that serves a
vaguely similar dessert; see this visit
for example), but the red bean was better.
E approved of the dessert, saying, "I'll put this in my regular
rotation."
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After the pat-bing-soo, they served us very hot barley tea. I guess it
was supposed to heat us up after the shaved ice.
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