North by North West

Well I got pulled over again, this time by a Californian State Trooper in Mono Lake. His first words were "Whats that thing in the back window?"
me: "It's an Iowa state transit title"
Him: "That looks like you printed it off a printer at home"
me: "I have sort of heard that before"
him: "Do you have any documents to back that up? Let's start with your license and passport"
But he was ok. He radioed in the numbers and got back a reply and as I left town after refueling he even waved as he was coming the other way.
In the back of my mind I was thinking about Mammoth Lakes the name and googled "Long Valley Caldera" and lol and behold I was on the edge of the super volcano I was talking about weeks ago. Awesome. It had been bad weather the previous day so I woke up, checked out and went up the road in the car until the ice was quite thick and the caldera became apparent.

I am standing half way up one rim of the crater with the other side the mountains curving away from left to right completing the arc of the rim to join up behind the mountain in the right. The low bulges in the middle are magma up-swellings after the last major eruptions. It's hard to imagine that much area blasting matter into the stratosphere and even low orbit whilst dumping debris over large parts of the western United States.
The road continued after Mono Lakes to Carson Valley in Utah which is like a much larger scale Lake George. I believe they are even created through a similar process. Up the side of the valley to Lake Tahoe which is a quite large fresh water lake that still had snow coming down to the water line which is covered in Pine Forest. Beautiful. I imagine it would be quite busy in Summer. The road out from the north east corner went up and up and took a long time due to the snow but after that was Reno and through some of the best driving country to end up in Klamath Falls, Oregon

Mono Lake from the north

Eagle Lake, CA on route 139

Unfortunately many of the things I wanted to see are or have been closed including Yellowstone, the back doors into Yosemite - Tioga and Sonora Pass Roads and now it looks like both Crater Lake and Mount Rainier are still inaccessible so I am not sure what I am going to do. I still intend to get to Seattle but am not sure what route I will take. I am going to try get to the eastern edge of the Mt St Helen's NP but am not sure how far I can get. I think I will look at getting some snow chains as many roads have a requirement to at least have them in the boot and that may change in an instant to putting them on.