Travel Back in Time – September 22, 2010

There is surprisingly a lot to do around the area of Lee Vining. We stopped by the Chamber of Commerce and the lady there was so nice and she gave us a whole list of things to see and placed to go. Now we have to narrow it down.

We started out by going to the ghost town of Bodie. We have been to ghost towns before and have learned to not expect much. Maybe a couple of buildings, some piles of rocks, a few markers of what used to be there. Wow, Bodie was so much more. There are approximately 70 labeled buildings, and equally that amount of non-labeled buildings. In its heyday in the 1880’s, Bodie boasted a population of about 10,000 people. Most of them worked in the gold/silver mines or in the town. By 1910 most of the mine had stopped producing and the town was abandoned. The mine was shut down in 1938.

Some of the buildings in Bodie

Scott standing by the Fire Station

Me standing by the local prostitute's house

We took advantage of the mill tour. I had no idea how a mine worked and how they milled the gold and silver out of the rock. The tour was an experience in itself. The woman who gave the tour pretended to be the mill owner’s wife in 1905 and we were all new employees. As we went through the process of how the mill worked and what the different jobs were, we had to decide if it was the job we were going to take. I decided at the end that I would find a man who worked in the mine and be his wife. That would be a whole lot easier than the jobs she explained.

Listening to some of the job descriptions

We then spent sunset at the Mono Lake Tufa Towers. One of Mono Lake’s most characteristic features is the tufa towers that line its shores. Because the lake has no outlet, trace amounts of salts and minerals brought into the lake by freshwater streams have accumulated over the centuries, leaving Mono Lake with a salinity two to three times that of the Pacific Ocean. Tufa formations are the result of the combination of minerals in fresh and salt water. Over the years the calcium carbonate solidifies into rocky towers.

Some of the Tufa Towers

Waiting for the sun to set

Everyone else waiting for the sun to set

Scott thought it would be nice to go out at sunset and take pictures of the Tufas. He wasn’t the only one who had this idea. There were at least 100 other people lining the shores to take pictures. This included an entire tour bus of people on a photography tour. In the end, the sun set behind a cloud and the whole thing was anticlimactic. At least we can say we tried.

It was a beautiful moon rise and a great way to spend the last few hours of summer

So many choices for things to do tomorrow.