a visit to bodie, california   10 comments

Posted at 12:24 pm in california,history

From the outset of this journey, there was never a true “plan” of where it might lead, or when it would end. As I sit here writing this post, I can’t tell you what comes next after I leave southeast Arizona in mid-march. The only certainty is that I have to cross back into Canada by mid-April — that’s the limit for visiting the U.S. without a visa allowing for a longer stay.

As you know from reading earlier posts on this blog, the route that I eventually decided upon was to try to beat the autumn snows by going west to British Columbia, then turning down to cross through Idaho and Washington. With the threat of snow out of the way, I slowed down to spend time along rivers in Oregon and California. By mid-November, the cool rainy weather on the California coast soon drove me east over the Trinity Alps into the central valley, and then further east over the Sierras to cut across the corner of Nevada before continuing onwards into the Mojave desert region of southern California.

Although my plans were always very fluid, there was one particular place that I had hoped to visit along the way and that was the abandoned mining town of Bodie. That choice required taking a route that was somewhat off the beaten path — but then, that was my general rule of thumb in any case — to travel roads where I would encounter very little traffic and few people. On the eleventh of November, I left Carson City, Nevada, taking highway 395, bound for Ridgecrest, California. My intention was to make a side trip up to Bodie, although I knew that would make for a long day of driving. As described in my last post, the weather along that route was looking somewhat chancy. At several points, there were signs denoting highway closures due to snow in the passes at higher elevations. The Bodie Road is seasonal, and subject to closure at the beginning of winter. However, I was in luck on this day. There had been light snow over that range, but not enough to close the road down for the season. Turning through the gates, we traveled the 13 or so miles up to the town which lies at an elevation of about 8,400 feet. The final three or four miles were pretty washboardy. Sabrina stood with her head pushed into the space between the front seats, lifting and dropping my right arm with her nose — her usual strategy to discourage me from driving on bumpy roads. I told her to try to hang on as it wasn’t much further.

Rounding the last bend in the steadily climbing road, I was surprised to find quite a number of buildings spread out across a large, gently dipping hollow between the surrounding rounded peaks. In the past, I’d seen photos shot at Bodie, but they were almost always of the same pair of buildings (see below – click on all images for larger views), or of a particular rusted car, the gas pumps in front of an old garage, and so on. I wasn’t expecting to find the standing remains of so many buildings, although the town is certainly just a shadow of its former self – as described in the above-linked wikipedia page.

It was windy and cold, and the ground was strewn with a thin layer of snow. Sabrina stuck her head out the sliding side door of the van, looked around for a few seconds, then turned and curled up on her warm, comfy sleeping bag. I took that to mean, “No, I don’t feel like walking around with you for a couple of hours while you shoot photos.” So, I pulled on a hat and an extra layer of clothes, grabbed my camera, and wandered off to explore the town. Although I’m not much for living by the clock, I gave myself ninety minutes to tour around before pushing on with our day’s journey. I found very few fellow visitors there that afternoon. Most that I encountered seemed to be part of a German-speaking group that arrived in several SUVs. As we dispersed down the various pathways leading between buildings, I found myself pretty much alone for most of my visit.

That day, I decided to try out a new camera that I’d bought while in Oregon. My regular camera had seemed to be acting up for a few days, so I decided to get a new back-up camera as “insurance” for the rest of my travels (a Canon G10). It made for some interesting and occasionally frustrating shooting, but I came away with a group of reasonably decent photos considering the dull weather. I’ve put most of them up in an online gallery. If you’re interested, just click on any image that you wish to see and it will bring up a larger version. There’s a small-medium-large-original choice of links below each image once it comes up. “Original” is the largest version. As you can see, I focussed mainly on rusty machinery and other objects, close-ups of wood and brick textures, doors, wheels, and a few other things that happen to interest me. However, I have put up some shots of whole buildings as well as images of objects displayed in store fronts.

As the afternoon ticked away, I kept one eye on the sky, watching for any change in the weather. In the end, I cut my stay a bit short as the odd snowflake spun by on the wind. It was just as well that we got on our way as it turned out that my time and distance calculations for that day’s travel were way off base — but more about that in my next post. Vowing to try to come back this way for a longer visit at some future date, I steered us back down the washboard road and, to Sabrina’s relief, onto smooth pavement to continue on our way south to that evening’s destination at Ridgecrest. More coming up soon…

Written by bev on February 1st, 2009

10 Responses to 'a visit to bodie, california'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'a visit to bodie, california'.

  1. Looks like an interesting place to spend an afternoon. Your photos definitely provide a full sense of the place. I can easily imagine a profoundly deep quiet there. I’m not sure why, but I especially like that there are curtains still hanging in the upstairs windows of those two buildings.

    robin andrea

    2 Feb 09 at 11:00 am

  2. Bodie is on my list. I hope some day I’ll get out there with my wife. All we need is the time.

    Mark

    2 Feb 09 at 10:05 pm

  3. robin – Yes, it is interesting. I could probably spend 2 or 3 days there as the site is quite large.

    Mark – I hope you get out there sometime soon. Make the time if you can. I think that about every place. And, I look places like Bodie and always worry a little about such things as grass fires. However, hopefully it will still be around for decades to come.

    bev

    3 Feb 09 at 3:30 pm

  4. Hi Bev, I enjoyed this post and the photos of all the old stuff.
    All the best to you.

    Duncan

    4 Feb 09 at 6:39 am

  5. Hi Duncan – I’m glad that you dropped by for a visit and enjoyed the Bodie photos. It was quite a neat place. All the best to you too!

    bev

    4 Feb 09 at 10:54 am

  6. Hi Bev- Your Bodie photos are so much better than mine. Interesting how different our experiences there were. I visited in early September. It was hot and the place was packed. I liked the somber tone of your pictures- I’ll bet you felt more of an authentic ghost town experience. On the other hand, I did get to photograph a pretty cool longhorn beetle.

    DougT

    5 Feb 09 at 10:12 am

  7. Doug – After reading your comment, I went to your blog and revisited the Bodie post from 2007. You’re right. It looks very different than when I was there in Nov. 2008. When I was there, it seemed somewhat desolate and quite deserted. Much more “ghostly”. (-:

    bev

    5 Feb 09 at 11:30 am

  8. Bev,

    Just finished doing the Bodie gallery. Whoa. You captured this in just a couple hours?

    The last time I did the Chicago Institute of Art I found myself jabbering aloud about what I was looking at with my gallery companion. (the long-suffering Jonna :0)

    I can’t help myself. When I encounter art – I pontificate.

    Please indulge my babbling about your photos:

    133 – Love this. Looking at the view ‘backward’ through the windshield.

    131 – Decomposing wooden lid (?) in snow. I’d like to see this in 10 years. More grass than wood, perhaps.

    135 – I tend to want to anthropomorphize all these pictures, but this . . . with the blank stares from deserted houses and abandoned cars . . . . ohhhhhh . . . .. .

    138 – Ford Headstone. That’s it. It’s a headstone. It’s wonderful.

    8 – gorgeous

    22 – wonderful geometry and depth. Grass in foreground inviting us in. Wow.

    26 – Ansel Adams – Moonrise Hernandez New Mexico.

    73 – may be my fav. Isn’t there some Hindu, Buddhist symbol very similar to this?

    160 – So much here. The ephemeral iron embraced by ephemeral snow. Going, going . . . .

    163 – Ha! A primitive satellite dish. Groan.

    There was SO much here – windows, lanterns – sear landscapes, abandoned tools and machinery. Now I understand why this stop was important for you.

    Cathy

    5 Feb 09 at 2:55 pm

  9. Cathy – Thanks for the detailed comment on the Bodie photos. It’s always cool when people respond to your photos and can describe their thoughts as you have today. I love the wheel photo too, especially the way the grass seems to be shooting up the way sand would if the wheel were spinning.

    bev

    5 Feb 09 at 8:20 pm

  10. It is a magical mystical place. The first time I went there, I forgot my camera. The second time, I took maybe 100 pictures but my camera had no film in it. The third time, I had a digital camera, all was in order, and I got on the tour of the stamp mill and got lots of pics of the lathe drill press, generators, etc. in the machine shop. Now, where are they…

    Douglas Raymond

    25 Jan 10 at 10:51 pm

Leave a Reply