Dream Trip 2008: April

Great Travel Moment

While living in San Francisco during the summer of 2007, my wife and I set out on a road trip to find the abandoned ghost town of Bodie. Now a State Historic Park, the town has been preserved in a state of arrested decay - nothing has been repaired or changed since the last residents left over fifty years ago. We spent a day traveling through the California desert, over 8,000 feet into the mountains via dirt road, reaching Bodie in the early twilight hours. We walked the streets through the eerie silence, peeking into windows and imagining a time gone by. 1940's newspapers still lay open on kitchen tables; empty whiskey bottles still collected dust on the saloon bar. I snapped this picture of the Bodie jailhouse just before we left. It was a humbling, ethereal experience we will never forget.