Saturday 17th May
We'd already had breakfast, as this hotel had breakfast included, so once we had our lunch sorted, we jumped in the car and headed North for a place called Bodie.
Bodie is a ghost town.
Yes, that's right - a genuine western town that was in use until after 1940, but is now abandoned and is currently 'held in a state of arrested decay' meaning they repair the weather damage, but they let the buildings rot naturally. If you're interested in the back story, Bodie has its own Wikipedia page.
On the way there, we saw some odd effects in the clouds above...
Was this the mothership returning to Area 51??
Bodie is about 90 miles north of us, with the last part of the road a 3 mile long dirt track which was pretty wild in places.
We arrived pretty much as one of the tours was about to start, so we went straight over to the starting point which was to take us through the abandoned Mine Press building where all the gold and silver ore was crushed up and eventually separated into gold and silver bullion for transportation to the mints in San Francisco.
The guide started the tour by warning us of the conditions in the town. As Bodie is 8400 feet above sea level, the air is thinner here and I certainly found myself breathing harder as we walked up and down the building.
The tour lasted about a hour. There are plenty more photos in the slideshow below. You can click the slideshow to see all the photos at once.
Once out of the tour, we decided to walk back to the car and have our lunch that we'd bought with us. Our BLT and Ham/Cheese sandwiches were very nice - if a little difficult to eat sitting in the car.
We finished lunch and headed back out into the town for a proper look around. We had a guide booklet that showed us who lived where and what they did for a living.
Most of the places were locked, but a couple allowed you inside to look around.
Even if the place was locked, you could still peek into the windows to see the interior.
We finally left around 4pm and headed back home.
We briefly stopped off at a place called Mono Lake. It's a big lake which, from the road, looks like it has piles of snow or ice in it. On closer inspection if turned out that this 'ice' is in fact lime and has build up over the ages into some odd shaped 'statues' which stand around the water's edge.
From there we headed back to Bishop. By the time we arrived, it was almost dusk, so we picked up a pizza and drove on a bit, eventually parking in a side road of the 395. There we waited for the sunset which, when it did arrive, was a bit disappointing.
Still, there's a few more days to try yet. We drove back to the hotel, still dusty from the ghost town. So first order of the evening was a shower to get cleaned of all the dust we'd picked up. The car is filthy too!