Driving through the Sierra Nevadas

On our recent weekend away we drove through the Sierra Nevada mountains to reach our destination of Bodie, a real life Old West ghost town.

I must admit that I never gave too much thought to the actual drive, just our destination, so I wasn't prepared for the stunning views that lay ahead. I honestly don't know why it never occurred to me that we'd be driving through such amazing scenery. I mean, we were heading through the mountains just south of Lake Tahoe and just north of Yosemite, two of California's most beautiful locations. I guess I was just excited about visiting a real life ghost town and didn't think too much about anything else!

The other thing that I wasn't prepared for was the weather. I mean, it's almost Summer, it'd be clear skies ahead, right? Uh uh! While the sun did come out for us, at one point we found ourselves driving through sleet. And then rain. And then maybe a light sprinkling of snow. Or maybe that was sleet again. Either way, we were a little worried that we wouldn't make it through Sonora Pass high in the mountains - and we didn't have a back up plan. But all is well that ends well, and luckily the weather cleared up allowing us to drive through the pass with no problems.

52 Weeks: Week 21

Week 21: Long Weekend Getaway

This past weekend was a long weekend for Memorial Day here in America. Kim had the Monday off work so we decided to go on a three day trip to the High Sierras region of California. I'll have more detailed posts coming soon about each of the places that we visited over the weekend but for now I wanted to share a quick look at our adventure.

On a side note, here's a strange thing about working in America that my Australian friends might find interesting... While there are quite a few public holidays each year, your employer decides which ones you get off. And I don't just mean for people working in stores or restaurants that may happen to be open on a public holiday, I mean for everyone! Your employer sets how many public holidays you are entitled to each year and then they chose which holidays those will be. How weird is that?

Anyway, back to the story...

I've been keen to visit a ghost town for such a long time. A friend recently took a trip through the High Sierras and visited the ghost town of Bodie. When I saw the photos on Facebook I just knew that we had to go there. Bodie is a real life ghost town that boomed back in the late 1800s gold rush and then died off as the gold petered out. The whole town is now a State Historic Park and has been preserved in a state of  "arrested decay", existing just as it did when the last residents left.