The Road to Nowhere

We stopped to camp at a small town in Nevada just so we could drive up into the mountains to find the old ghost town of Bodie, CA.  We were near the borders between the 2 states, so it wasn’t as far a drive as it sounds……or, as it turns out, as it felt!

It was a beautiful drive, with colorful sagebrush and mountains in the distance.  We had started on one route, but then saw a sign that promised a shortcut to Bodie.  Silly us – we believed it!

I think we were on some range land, although we didn’t see any cattle.  In hindsight, the ranchers may have already moved their cattle down lower in the mountains in what would be there winter pastures.  The air was a bit nippy and the change of seasons was a definite promise.

There was some interesting looking cactus growing along the roadside, and the roadside gave us a false promise of getting closer to our goal of Bodie.  About 3 miles after we saw this sign, the road suddenly ended and became impassable, even if we could figure out where the road had once meant to take us.  Our only option was to backtrack about 20 miles to the main road and take the longer alternative – darn!

We drove along the more formal route – meaning that it was mostly paved roads, until we came to another sign directing us to Bodie.  Should we trust it?  It seemed a more formal sign, so we decided to take it.  Believe it or not, when we saw this deserted cabin, we saw it as a sign that we were probably on the right route, and that this may have been a more remote cabin, in what we now thought of as the “suburbs” of Bodie!

We saw a small herd of mule deer, and this one seemed to treat us as much of a novelty as we saw it as being!  Still, we persisted….certainly Bodie couldn’t be too much farther down the road!

And, we finally saw it in the distance!  The ghost town of Bodie, and some scenery that spoke to its mining history.  The ghost town is now a state historic park, and it seemed odd to have something as established as a state park with so few signs directing one to it.  But, never mind!  We found it, and now the second part of our adventure was about to begin!  

Enjoy!