Monday, December 8, 2014

John Muir Camping trip - Part 2

Last month, I told a little bit about our camping trip up to the eastern Sierra to help my friend get started on the John Muir Trail.  We'd spent the first day geocaching, getting his truck up to Whitney Portal and then finding a spot to camp for the night.  

The next morning, we got up, broke camp and then headed over to the general store at Reds Meadows where my friend Craig was planning on leaving a cache of food at the general store.  We decided to have breakfast there, then drove out to Mammoth to find a couple of caches, including a couple that were above 9000 feet in elevation for a challenge cache I'm trying to complete.

After that we headed north and decided to visit Bodie, CA.  Bodie is a state park that preserves the ghost town of Bodie in a state of "arrested" decay.  That is to say, they are keeping the place in the state it's in and not letting it get any worse for wear.

Bodie is in a pretty rugged, remote area where the only access is along a long dirt/gravel road that could jar the fillings right out of your teeth if you drove too fast on the road.  Scenery is awesome and we had the perfect weather for the day with a lot of rain clouds all about us.  We were getting sprinkled on from time to time, but that didn't diminish our spirits at all.  I went shutter snapping happy with the clouds that we had that day and got some tremendous shots.

One of the first places we explored when we got there was the cemetery.  Now I can just imagine the thoughts of some of my readers, "Why would you want to explore a cemetery?"  In actuality, old cemeteries are really quite interesting.  You can walk amongst the graves and see the history of the town unfolding right there.  You can speculate as to what happened to some families.  Was it a disease that killed the wife and daughter, or did it happen during childbirth?  Either way, I've always found old cemeteries fascinating and if I have the chance, will usually take some time to explore.  I think part of that is going to be lost for future generations as more and more people opt for cremation and have their ashes spread somewhere.  The gravestone at least is a marker and memory of someone once they passed into the great unknown.  Will we have that available to us in the future?

To be continued....

No comments:

Post a Comment