Sunrise light on a grove of tufa towers emerging from the water of Mono Lake with soft green and dusty-red wild grasses in the foreground, Canada geese in the shallow water with reflections of the rocky towers, and desert hills in the distance.

#3: Mono Lake’s open state park

Sunrise light on a grove of tufa towers emerging from the water of Mono Lake with soft green and dusty-red wild grasses in the foreground, Canada geese in the shallow water with reflections of the rocky towers, and desert hills in the distance.

Number 3 on our Top Ten highlights list is the solution that is keeping Mono Lake’s state park open and operating.

Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve Interpretive Specialist Dave Marquart at Old Marina explaining how the new parking fee keeps the park open. Photo by Arya Degenhardt.

A little more than a year ago, we found out that the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve had been removed from the state’s closure list. The next day we began working on a plan for keeping the park open—the solution is a modest parking fee at Old Marina of only $3.00 per vehicle. An “iron ranger” for collecting fees was installed in May, and visitors to Old Marina have been dropping their fee envelopes in ever since!