by Lorna Harris on August 25, 2009
During our recent trip to Mammoth Lakes, we took a trip out to Bodie State Historic Park. It’s an old gold mining ghost town and I was expecting a one street town with a saloon, jail and places to tie up horses, just like an old cowboy film. But Bodie is so much bigger than this, and I was surprised. At its hey day 10,000 people lived in the town, it was bigger than Los Angeles which only had 3,000 residents.
The town is named for Waterman S. Body (William Bodey) who found gold in the hills in 1875 but the boom was short lived and by the 1940s the town had been abandoned. It became a state park in 1962 and is maintained in a state of ‘arrested decay.’
[read the rest…]
by Lorna Harris on July 28, 2009
We toured Hearst Castle last week during a drive up the coast. It sits up in the hills above San Simeon, near Cambria. It’s a fascinating place to stop and a good place to break your journey as you travel along Highway 1 between San Luis Obispo and Monterey.
William Randolph Hearst created the estate during the 1920s and 30s. It is filled with antiquities from Spain and Italy, some of them over 1,000 years old. Hearst wanted to create a feeling of the Mediterranean from over 500 years ago.
There are a number of different tours you can take. The house and grounds are so vast it would be impossible to take it all in in one go. The best option is to start with tour Number One. It’s a basic tour; you see the main rooms in Casa Grande including the movie theater and one of the guesthouses. You also see the two swimming pools. The remaining tours take you on other sections of the house, or the garden during the summer. There’s also an evening tour, which features people dressed up in period costume bringing the house to life. [read the rest…]
