Bodie, CA - the World's Greatest Ghost Town, followed by the Mono Inn at Mono Lake Restaurant

I'm the first to admit that I had my doubts about the experience of visiting a ghost town, a gold mining town that was abandoned and now looks like a neutron bomb hit it - the houses are there, the furniture is there, but the people are gone.  To me, it sounded like a trip to Detroit.

Bodie changed all that, as we had a great outing and an experience brought to life by the Friends of Bodie, a group of people determined to provide the grist for your imagination.  After speaking with a few of the volunteers and a dedicated park ranger, their recounting of events in the town, both previous and modern, really brought the ghost town to life.  http://www.bodie.com/

Bodie is out there - well off the beaten track.  It was a little over an hour's drive from Mammoth Lakes.  The final three miles of the road are unpaved.

It's so far out there, the rest stop on the road is the smallest we've ever seen.

The town is "well-preserved".  The state park rangers spend much of their time making sure it stays frozen in time.  If the roof needs repair, they remove the shingles, tin, or tar paper, rehabilitate the roof, and then replace the original roofing material exactly as it existed before.  Any surface repairs are made with restoration-quality materials, so the ghost town remains frozen in time.

We were lucky enough to arrive on "Friends of Bodie Day", so the town was a full re-enactment of the early days, and every volunteer in costume enthusiastically played the part.

Best of all, if you time your journey right, you will be passing by the Mono Inn at Mono Lake Restaurant just in time for sunset, a fantastic dinner, and moonrise!

Sunset looks like this.

And we were lucky enough to see the full moon rise minutes after sunset!

Unfortunately, I got lazy and used the landscape camera for the dinner pictures, and they did not do the great food at the Mono Inn at Mono Lake Restaurant justice so I'm not including them here.  Suffice it to say that my brined pork with quinoa, my son's elk burger with sweet potato fries, and my wife's venison over scalloped potatoes with feta were all fantastic, as was the chocolate torte and the creme brulee we enjoyed for dessert.  The wine selection left me wanting to try more, and the selection of ales was good and welcome after a full day walking around a dusty ghost town.