Ghost Town

We start the day by heading to the New York bagel company for breakfast, and sit trying to decide what to do. What we had planned was to go see devil's post pile monument and then drive to yosemite national park. Unfortunatley we forgot about snow, both roads are snowed off and impassable at this time of year, so need to make other plans. Nearby it seems people ski and snowboard to fill their days. I haven't brought those sort of clothes to give this a go, so we find the visitor centre, and flick through leaflets about local attractions surrounded by blue jays, chipmunk and squirel. We are watching the trees when we are surrounded by cops, three cop cars pulling up around the dodge, three officers stepping outwards us. We have to explain ourselves, what we are doing, where we are from, where we are heading before they will leave. It seems that the problem is that we are taking photo's of the trees, which is close to the park rangers station we didn't realise is a federal building.

Here pops another reminder of home, leaving san Fran I took notice of a sign towards Stockton, and here we pick up leaflets for a town called Bishop. Neither one tempts us to see their sights.

We drive past the unflinching Mono Lake, the blushing lilac mountain peering demurely in, and there isn't a photo I can take to do it justice again. We have decded on Bodie, a ghost town somewhere North.

'Turn left' she says.

We head down a road that says 30 miles an hour, but it is a road of orange dust and rocks, and we are never able to drive over five. I am beginning to wonder if this is a wild goose chase, but there is no turning the back, the road is too narrow, we are surrounded by dessert, steep drops, canyon faces and rocks. When we finally reach tarmac again he looks as if he would like some time alone with it, but that's Ok. There's already been some floor kissing of my own going on. In Bodie the mountains seem very far away, we are deep in the desert, with nothing around for miles. A town as people left it, buildings standing defiantly against the unflinching sky and wood curling into exotic blooms in the wind. It is sunny and hot, I get out the sun cream and he shakes his head. Later he will look like a man who tried to fly into the sun, with bright red markings on cheeks and chest the shape of a stencil of Santa Claus.

We stay in Bodie for a fair few hours, a whole town, evidence of lives lived, a population of 20,000 dwindling to 200 when the gold ran out, until only two dozen people remained. I wonder what it would have been like to be in the last dozen, what made them stay. I peer into windows at easy chairs still in place, wallpaper hanging by hope alone, peeling, curling into its own bouquets. Any minute someone could come home, people have been here, left something behind.

Back at the hotel it gets dark, we forget to buy dinner, and eat Reese's and nuts. I write postcards to try and name what I have seen.

New food today: Garlic bagel, reese's crispy crunch
Song in my head: been to the desert with a horse with no name- who was that by? Google seems very far away
Falling asleep to: A show about Folsam prison