Bodie

I've been reading "The Lost Continent" for weeks now, but over the weekend, I read the part where the author, Bill Bryson, travels out west. In one part, he tells of his visit to some gold mining ghost towns in Colorado, driving up an unpaved disaster of a road in a Chevette. Of course, it starts snowing, and the only thing a Chevette is good for when you are stuck in the middle of nowhere in the midst of a snow storm is the four tires that you can take off and set fire to as a last gasp for heat.
OK, so I exaggerate. But reading that reminds me of how much I love the West and miss the opportunity to visit my parents when they lived out in Lake Tahoe. This was in the late 90s when I was in school, so during breaks in the summer and winter, I'd head out for several weeks at a time. It was fantastic, being surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery one could ever imagine...grand mountains rising up from the bluest and clearest lake. wow.
Anyway, during one of my trips out there in the summer, my parents and I, along with a family friend, headed out to a ghost town called Bodie, in California, which is now run as a state park and left in a state of "arrested decay."
There are two roads into and out of town; one is a nice little paved number which gets you up to the 8400ft elevation of Bodie with relative comfort and ease, and the second, labeled "scenic" on the map, is an unpaved one-lane leap of faith down the mountain, through a ravine, and over a rickety old bridge.
I think it was my dad's idea to go down the second...why go anywhere if it's easy? Some background on my dad; this is a dude that went to Colombia at 20 because he thought Austria was "boring."
So, off we go heading on this snow-covered (might have been summer, but we were at a high elevation) road. It would have brilliant had someone then noted that, since it had last snowed a month ago, no tire tracks on the snow ahead was a bad thing and we should turn around.
Nope, we kept trudging along and the snow started thinning out. We had a cliff wall to the left and what appeared to be a lengthy and undoubtedly uncomfortable fall to our right...that is until we came upon our first little wooden bridge. Up until that point, I had been thanking God we were driving a rather sizeable and sure-footed SUV. When I saw that bridge, I realized that said sure-footed SUV was also quite heavy, and put two and two together..."Oh. This could be a problem"
Seeing as we didn't have much of a choice and no place to turn around, we wheeled slowly onto this little bridge and inched across. Now, we had a cliff wall to our right and a lengthy and undoubtedly uncomfortable fall to our left.
I think it might have been around that time that we noticed we were dangerously low on gas. Decidedly inconvenient, that.
The snow on the road did eventually disappear, revealing a rather unkept dirt and gravel road, and down we traveled to a valley below.
We were, naturally, quite relieved when we came to the end of this road. We looked up to where we had come, with some pride, I might add. There was a sign at the beginning of it that said it was closed and dangerous. Might have been nice to have a similar sign at the top, but who's to quibble about details.
Of course, coming to the end of this road lead us to quite another quandry. We were now in the middle of nowhere in Nevada on unmarked roads with a decision to make: we could either go into the darkness on the left or the darkness on the right. And we were running out of gas, and it was cold.
When in doubt, it's "go left," right? I think we might have actually flipped for it and ended up taking a left...which was a good thing! A few miles down the road was a mine, and there were several lights on in the maintenance building. We drove up to the place, and out walked a dude with a "WTF?!" expression on his face. Granted, I think he might have been drinking a little bit, but I'm sure seeing a group of utterly lost folk in a yuppie SUV wasn't that high on his list of plausible Tuesday evening events.
We told him our little story about driving down the mountain and being all out of gas and what not. It turns out going left was a good idea, as going right would have meant, and I quote, "You'd have been lost like you would not believe." Also, in one of the nicer random acts of kindness I've been privy to, he filled up our tank and then refused to let us pay for it. He gave us directions to get back to a paved road -- drive through the creek and take a right at the abandoned house (no, seriously. those were the directions.) -- and I don't think I've ever been happier to be back on paved land.
Looking back on that little adventure, it was bloody brilliant. I loved it! I miss the west and exploring the ghost towns. There is a history there that really appeals to me, but why it appeals to me, I'm not sure.
So, there I sat in Failte, reading about Bryson's trip, and that all came back to me. It was a welcomed interlude of nostalgia that left a smile on my face and a longing to explore middles of nowhere everywhere with a trusty Land Cruiser...and a spare tank of gas.