Day 25: Bodie ghost town and June Lake loop

 Thursday, June 6

A refreshingly late 7:30 departure from Crane Flat campground in the northwestern corner of Yosemite NP. Because the Tioga Road is still closed due to snow, we had to do our 200-plus mile detour on 120W, 108E over the Sonora Pass, and back down south on 395. The highway through the Stanislaus national forest (80 miles on Rt 108) is incredibly scenic, but it also climbs close to 5000 ft and twists and winds its way through the mountain passes still covered with snow on the sides of the road. Finally, we made it to Bodie SHP (state historic park) just north of Lee Vining and Mono Lake at about 12:30. We ate lunch in the van and then explored the ghost town of Bodie for the next two hours. Bodie was a mining town in the gold rush era of the 1800s and then it fell into ruin after the mines dried up. Most of the buildings have been preserved intact by the state park system and you can peer in the windows to see what the residents left behind when they abandoned what has been known as a "sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion." Fights and murders were a weekly occasion and gambling, drinking, and prostitution were rampant back in the 1870s. Today, it is a quiet photographers paradise in the desert highlands east of the Sierra Nevadas. 

After leaving Bodie, we drove south on 395 and then took the 17-mile Rt 158 June Lakes loop past Gray Lake, Silver Lake, and June Lake, having some Mexican takeout overlooking the latter lake. Then a little farther south, we settled in at the Glass Creek campground in the Inyo national forest ($10 donation).