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Sharon and I decided on short notice to spend the Memorial Weekend exploring ghost towns and doing some fishing.
Saturday morning, we headed up US 395 towards Bodie Ghost Town. The trip is about 6 hours from where we live with minimal stops. The trip was dreadfully windy until we got to Lone Pine.
The Sierra Nevadas were still coated with the snowcaps of their Spanish namesake:
We stopped at Mono Lake's South Tufas for a short photo safari:
We then headed around the lake to a road that goes into the Bodie State Park from the south. The dirt road, marked as Cottonwood Canyon Road, starts north of the lake and climbs steadily. There are some great views if you stop to look back at Mono Lake and the Sierra Nevadas in the distance:
The road is easy. Most any vehicle can make adequate time and we saw trucks towing RVs on the way back down. This is the view from Bodie as a car approaches on Cottonwood Canyon Road:
Here's the view that we found as we approached the town of Bodie:
Bodie is the best ghost town that I have ever been to so far, and I have been to a fair number of ghost towns. This is a great place to plan a trip. Bring your camera:
We planned to take the northern route out of Bodie to Bridgeport for the night. The road goes to the ghost town of Masonic and other early mining sites. We climbed up this road from Bodie:
There are several excellent elevated views of the ghost town along the way:
After we crested the ridge from Bodie, we found ourselves at a snow field across the road:
I saw tracks going around the snow, but how bad could it be right? Afterall, it IS late May. I turned on the lockers and took the plunge.
Plunge it was! I went from mildly damp soil to 2 feet of ice that looked like snow in less than 25 feet! We came to a sickening stop with tires spinning almost as soon as we started:
I shoveled the hard packed ice out from the fronts of the axles and the gas tank that had us locked in place. Then I shoveled some tracks toward the edge of the snow pack for all four tires. With incredible luck, I found two small boulders that I could winch off of to add extra pull while gunning the crap out of Mr. Green to get back to the muddy edge:
Lesson learned. Stick the tracks around the melting ice!:
Even so, those tracks died when another 'snow bank’ (read as ICE) was encountered. There was no way around this one:
Since I couldn't see a solid winch point anywhere close by, we were forced to turn back.
We headed back out on the main road to Bodie. It didn't take long to get to the hotel in Bridgeport. We had dinner and then I wanted to go do some fishing. While trying to do so IT SNOWED! Hello! It's Memorial Weekend! WTF!
Regardless, it was good time and a nice easy alternative trail into Bodie. I’ll have to find time in warmer weather to run the Masonic trail someday.
Saturday morning, we headed up US 395 towards Bodie Ghost Town. The trip is about 6 hours from where we live with minimal stops. The trip was dreadfully windy until we got to Lone Pine.
The Sierra Nevadas were still coated with the snowcaps of their Spanish namesake:
We stopped at Mono Lake's South Tufas for a short photo safari:
We then headed around the lake to a road that goes into the Bodie State Park from the south. The dirt road, marked as Cottonwood Canyon Road, starts north of the lake and climbs steadily. There are some great views if you stop to look back at Mono Lake and the Sierra Nevadas in the distance:
The road is easy. Most any vehicle can make adequate time and we saw trucks towing RVs on the way back down. This is the view from Bodie as a car approaches on Cottonwood Canyon Road:
Here's the view that we found as we approached the town of Bodie:
Bodie is the best ghost town that I have ever been to so far, and I have been to a fair number of ghost towns. This is a great place to plan a trip. Bring your camera:
We planned to take the northern route out of Bodie to Bridgeport for the night. The road goes to the ghost town of Masonic and other early mining sites. We climbed up this road from Bodie:
There are several excellent elevated views of the ghost town along the way:
After we crested the ridge from Bodie, we found ourselves at a snow field across the road:
I saw tracks going around the snow, but how bad could it be right? Afterall, it IS late May. I turned on the lockers and took the plunge.
Plunge it was! I went from mildly damp soil to 2 feet of ice that looked like snow in less than 25 feet! We came to a sickening stop with tires spinning almost as soon as we started:
I shoveled the hard packed ice out from the fronts of the axles and the gas tank that had us locked in place. Then I shoveled some tracks toward the edge of the snow pack for all four tires. With incredible luck, I found two small boulders that I could winch off of to add extra pull while gunning the crap out of Mr. Green to get back to the muddy edge:
Lesson learned. Stick the tracks around the melting ice!:
Even so, those tracks died when another 'snow bank’ (read as ICE) was encountered. There was no way around this one:
Since I couldn't see a solid winch point anywhere close by, we were forced to turn back.
We headed back out on the main road to Bodie. It didn't take long to get to the hotel in Bridgeport. We had dinner and then I wanted to go do some fishing. While trying to do so IT SNOWED! Hello! It's Memorial Weekend! WTF!
Regardless, it was good time and a nice easy alternative trail into Bodie. I’ll have to find time in warmer weather to run the Masonic trail someday.
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