Bodie, California high desert to Yosemite National Park

2 July, 2013

Bridgeport, California

 Hi everyone your writer for today is Norbert and I will try to give you another twist to our little adventure. I hope you enjoy.

 After a hearty breakfast with  the Hitchcocks at the ornate Bridgeport Saloon we headed out of town to an old 1800’s mining ghost town named Bodie. The road into the town proved to be challenging with 10 miles of ungraded goat track. The landscape around was typical high desert sagebrush and temps in the mid 30’s at 10 am in the

 Our arrival at Bodie  was a sultry walk into a deserted town except for a handful of tourists wandering around the abandoned buildings. The town was active from 1860-1940 and from then on it was deserted. Townspeople virtually left the town overnight and did not bother to take any much of their personal belongings. So the town is rich in artifacts and history. Alex and Evan marveled at going through the large cemetery and taking in the saloons and the old schoolhouse. They couldn’t believe how much was left in the buildings as if the townspeople had gone on holidays. Bodie in its heyday had over 10,000 people and became known for badmen, bad climate. The town finally died with the advent of WW2 and low gold and silver prices.

 After spending nearly2 hours bedazzled in Bodie our action packed tour continued on to Hwy 395 with Dave at the helm driving at a frantic pace to make our next itinerary stop. Lunch was a quick sandwich stop near Mona Lake a huge salty body of water similar to the Dead Sea. As we moved off Hwy 395 on to 120 we gradually gained elevation up to around 9500ft with landscapes changing to evergreen and massive granite etched mountains and startling fast flowing creeks and rivers to stunning waterfalls. The entrance to Yosemite National  Park was a ranger stop where we were greeted with lots of maps and info sheets to all the wonderful things you can do in this huge Park.

 Driving on saw us enter the large Yosemite Valley where countless turns and undulating roads opened up new views of glacial cut mountains and large groves of Ponderosa pines, cedars and black oak trees.

 
Next we moved on to a 2hour tour of  the Park with a commentary as we rode in a open seated carriage pulled by a truck. The highlights were the El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. We stopped afterwards for coffee at the beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel. It reminded us of something similar to the Railway Hotels like the Banff Hotel in Canada. This hotel mostly caters for higher end spenders but it has the most beautiful open air hotel we have seen. Esther particularly loved the Antipasto served and wished we could have stayed a couple of nights.

 

Back in the car again and off we drove back to the Hitchcock’s lovely home in Avery. We agreed  afterwards that the daytrip was the most scenic and action packed trip done to date. We were all weary and made it an early night.