Mono Lake Committee Information Center & Bookstore

The Mono Lake Committee's Information Center and Bookstore sits right in Lee Vining, and it's the first stop worth making before you head to the lake or push on toward Yosemite from the east side. The staff are locals who know the area cold — trip planning, road conditions, campsite picks, even Yosemite height restrictions for trailers all show up in visitor accounts of stopping in. The center is open daily from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM and carries a 4.7-star rating across 156 reviews.

Free Tufa Tours

The center runs free guided walks explaining how Mono Lake's tufa towers form — the calcium-carbonate formations that make this shoreline unlike anywhere else in the Sierra. Visitors consistently single out the tours as informative, with an on-site demonstration of tufa formation that reviewers call a highlight.

A Bookstore Built Around One Lake

The attached bookstore has its own following — one reviewer named it their favorite bookstore anywhere. Alongside books and maps, the center is the public face of the Mono Lake Committee, the nonprofit whose decades of advocacy halted Los Angeles DWP's water diversions from the Mono Basin and has funded stream-restoration work that reviewers describe as having visibly rebuilt the surrounding ecosystem.

Call ahead at (760) 647-6595 for current tour schedules or trip-planning questions.