A trip to Bodie ghost-town

California state is a really nice place to travel to. The nature is amazing! You can find there so many different types like desert, mountains, ocean shore, big trees and more. But also, California is reach of history. And one of the historical jewels is Bodie ghost town.


It's hidden in deserted Sierra Nevada mountain range, and it used to be a pretty much big gold-mining town where population was nearly 10 thousand people once. For those times, it was a really big town. Well... You can find facts about Bodie on Wikipedia.



I've been in Bodie before, and at that time, I promised myself to come there again. Despite of tourists visiting the place, I always feel loneliness and abandonment of Bodie. It feels like only howling winds and an occasional ghosts live in this town. I'm not sure about the second ones, but winds are really frequent guests there. Roads to this historic state park are open only in summer time, and Bodie is covered with snow and silence on winter.



Unfortunately, only small part of the town survived the time, but interiors remain are as they were left and stocked with goods.


This trip, we were really lucky! It was a day of Bodie. Volonteers arrived from all over the country, dressed up in old clothes, and pretended they are real Bodie residents.




Real old A-1 Ford cars filled up Bodie's streets


Some buildings such as casino and old saloon was open to public. I felt like we jumped through the time to the old days and dived into that simple and difficult life in deserted Bodie where hot and dry in summer and cold and snowy in winter.




So when you travel to California, save a couple of days to visit eastern Sierra Nevada and Bodie historical state part. Feel the history breath on your own; absorb the years. Believe me, you won't regret!

Story by Irina (IrinaPhotography)

Trip to Death Valley

Do you like to travel? Do you like to explore new places where you want to go back again and again? If you answer "yes", you would understand me :) One of the places where I want to go again and again is Death Valley National Park. So today I would like a story about my last trip to this gorgeous place. You can click any image to get a little bit bigger size.

In general, Death Valley is the hottest, driest, and the lowest place in Northern America. The lowest point is 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. This white crust on the picture is salt.

Death Valley National Park is huge. To visit all points of interest is almost unreal in one day. To get familiar with all easy to reach points (I mean the points that you can reach on paved roads), you'll need at least 2-3 days. And I'm not mentioning the places that are reachable by high clearance or even 4-wheel-drive vehicles only. :) So can you imagine the size of the park now? :)

Death Vally always have been attracting for me. I'd heard and read a lot of articles and stories even before I visited this place first time. The park always was for me as such a mysterious place with the scary name. But believe me, nothing scary there besides very hot and dry weather. Look at those beautiful landscapes. See how vast are they!

This park is a real pearl on California's map. There are you can find a lot of different formations. There are huge multi-colored mountains, big crust of salt, sand dunes, craters... The only one thing that is not frequently seen is water.

Ubehebe Crater. It appeared as a result of large steam explosions

Zabriskie point is attractive because of the interesting hills shape. Seems like huge water streams washed them out. Well... maybe they did after ice age.

There are at least couple dunes in the valley. When you get there, you really feel you are in a desert. Sand is everywhere.

Also, I think roads in the park are quite interesting. Some of them are straight like a ribbon from ridge to ridge, and they start waving only in mountains.

Death Valley is also famous as historical place. It was quite developed mining place during California Gold Rush. There are a lot of abandoned mines and small ghost towns around.

When you are planning to visit California, make Death Valley as a destination point. You'll never regret... believe me!

Story by Irina (IrinaPhotography)

Our trip to Mt.St.Helen.

About three years ago I moved to North West Washington, just some 2 hours north from Seattle. I like to explore areas where I live, and I make lots of trips to Cascade range of mountains.
The Cascades are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean. Most volcanoes are sleeping and hopefully are not about to erupt in near future. One such volcano I can see right from my house window - it's Mt.Baker.
But I really wanted to see the volcano which was erupted just recently - in 1980. I am taking about Mt.St.Helens. Finally last summer we took a trip over there. It was unforgettable. Here how the volcano looks now:


We wanted to get to the mountain as close as possible, so instead of going to visitor center which located about 30 miles from volcano, we went on Forest service roads, which lead us to Windy Ridge - an observation area only 4 miles (6.4 km) northeast of the crater, overlooking beautiful Spirit lake:


In the morning of Sunday, May 18, 1980 the eruption was signaled by an earthquake and volcano woke up from 123 years of hibernation... An eruption column rose 80,000 feet (24,400 m) into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states!


Fifty-seven people and thousands of animals were killed. Hundreds of square miles were reduced to wasteland.




Mount St. Helens was left with a crater on its north side. We climb some stairs to try and see inside the crater. Also I took close up photo of melted rocks on a side of the volcano, free of snow:



St. Helens remained active for some time - it produced an additional five explosive eruptions between May and October 1980. And it was building smaller dome inside the crater even until 2008.


Finally, only on July 10, 2008, it was determined that the eruption had ended after more than six months of no volcanic activity. Phew! What a relieve!

Story by Yulia (yuliaart)