Saturday, October 24, 2009

Bridgeport and Bodie






















We are setting out on our first and only vacation of 2009. Volcano telephone has been keeping me very busy. I’m working on a project that will allow us to control our Cable TV accounts from our Telephone billing system. I’m just hoping the Telephone software vendor hangs around long enough to provide support for their software, but enough work stuff.


We have headed out on a round-about trip to Lancaster California where we will be attending a Samboree which in laymen’s terms is a Good Sam Rally! Our path though is the indirect use of State highway 395 which travels on the eastern side of the Sierras. Our first stop is Twin Lakes RV resort which is about 12 miles south west of Bridgeport. Carol had the rig all ready to go on Friday afternoon when I got home from work. We left Plymouth around 2:00 PM and got to the RV resort around 7:00 PM. The longest (most stressful) part of the run was the drive through the Sierras, but when you live in an area where they are your back yard, you kind of have to expect that. Once we got to Minden Nevada, the steep windy roads were behind us, at least for the day. Traveling from Minden to Twin Lakes was a nice drive through some very gradual hills.
The RV park we are staying at is the ‘Twin Lakes RV Resort’. To borrow from Buzz Aldrin, as he referred to his visit to the moon, ‘This has a stark beauty all it’s own’. The RV park is in high desert, among pine trees and sage brush. It is very unique and a nice change from home. Carol’s sister Sandy called the other day and they were talking about our trip. Sandy asked if we were all packed and ready to go and Carol remarked, ‘… that’s the beauty of living in the RV, we’re always packed and ready to go!’. And that we are! On Saturday morning, I woke up and took the dogs out for a morning walk. Lily has a bladder infection, so it is important to get up and get her out to keep her comfortable. Well, as I looked at the outdoor thermometer, I saw it was 35 degrees out. A little chilly. I also noticed that we were missing a cat. It turned out that angel was a little chilly last night.


Another oddity of the area is that the deer are very tame. Apparently, those that come to visit give them lots of treats. They will come right up to the door of the rig looking for food!
Our Saturday was a full one. We spent a couple hours at the ghost town of Bodie Saturday morning. This was a very cool experience for both of us. It had been some 20 years since Carol had been here last, and I’ve never been there. I found it odd that the state put in 7 of the 10 miles as far as paved road to the the Bodie state park. This ghost town has probably over 50 some buildings still standing from the late 1800’s. The majority of the town has burned down due to a pair of fires late in the 1800’s and early in the 1900’s. There are no amenities there except for a bathroom. We found that we were getting hungery so we cut our visit short.
We then traveled to the town of Bridgeport. This is a cool old town. The only ‘Chain’ anything out here was a Shell station. There were no Starbucks, no Raily’s or Safeway and not even a Walgreens. We had a lunch at a local inn. We then walked around town. We found a very cool old jail house. There was also a museum that we would have liked to have checked out, but it closes for the season at the end of September.

After we got done checking out the town of Bridgeport, we went and found a couple of Geocaches in town. One of them was at an old helipad that used to be used by the State Parks system for life flights when someone is injured in the area. One of the great things about geocaching is that it takes it to places we normally wouldn’t go. This Helipad location allowed us a great view of the valley.


As we headed back to camp, we stopped at that one Shell station in town and topped off the tank of the Hulkster, at $3.89 a gallon, thank you very much. We paid a dollar less just 2 days earlier in Jackson at the local Safeway store fuel station. We haven’t seen prices this high since this time last year when we went to the Portland and Seattle. We also got a chance to get caught up on the weeks laundry.


We head off to Lone Pine and Manzanar tomorrow morning. Hopefully, we can update the blog on Monday evening.


Happy Camping! – Eric and Carol -

1 comment:

Mike & Karen Wraight said...

Looks you're having lots of fun. Enjoy the vacation,you deserve it.