Grant Lake — the Reservoir

The biggest lake of the loop opens up ahead — Grant Lake, nearly a thousand acres when it's full — and you'll notice immediately that it doesn't look like the others. No pines crowding the shore, no cabins: open sagebrush hills and a bathtub ring around the waterline.

That's because Grant is not a natural lake anymore. It's a reservoir, and not just any reservoir: this is the northernmost outpost of the Los Angeles water system. The water pooling beside you is owned, measured, and argued over four hundred miles from here.

Since nineteen forty-one, the Department of Water and Power has collected Rush Creek here and sent it south — through a tunnel bored beneath the volcanic hills at the north end of the loop, into the Owens River, and down the aqueduct to the taps of Los Angeles. What that did to the creek below this dam, and to Mono Lake at the end of it, became one of the great environmental battles in American history — and it was won, improbably, by birdwatchers, fishermen and a courtroom. Boone tells that one at the far end of the lake, and it's the best story on this road.

For now: the fishing here is excellent and underrated, the marina is the only services stop on this half of the loop, and the wind can turn the lake white in an afternoon. Watch the water as you drive — bald eagles and osprey work this shoreline.