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After a 3 and a half hour drive through the centre of Yosemite climbing to around 11,000ft, tioga pass boasted some of the most incredible mountain landscape I've ever seen. From snow canyons to vast forests to waterfalls and then Barron desert, we quite literally run out of road.
"Aaaaarrrrgghhhhhh" Jim's doing about 40 and then the Tarmac runs out.
The wheels smash into the rocky path signposted to bodie town, we're definitely off the beaten track now.
It takes about half an hour to drive up the beaten dusty road as the Hyundai hire car just isn't built for extreme off-road.
As we drive up the narrow bumpy path through the heated haze there are tiny wooden buildings dotted on the hill. A wooden church spire sticks up and there are unusual rusty metal contraptions dotted in the dried desert weeds.
"F*ck me this is cool!!!!" "Look at that!"
"That's insane" "unbelievable!"
Are pretty much what we said all afternoon.
Only about five percent of the buildings remain from its 1850 heyday. Today it stands just as the elements, fire and time has left it, a ghost town.
The bell from the old fire station would rarely cease to ring, indicating the number of years a person had lived. Murder was a daily occurrence and the phrase that bodie became associated with was that of a little girl who once said "Goodbye god, for I am going to Bodie"
The biggest building that still remains is the mill standing derelict on the hill side. It's closed to the public as it's in an unsafe state but surrounded by other wooden buildings.
The Jail, a church, a few shops, a school, a horse yard and loads of old rusted cars, ploughs and tin cans scattered the once 10,000 person strong town.
In the winter time the town would suffer from extreme cold and 100mile an hour winds sometimes having to deal with 20ft of snow. The conditions of how the people used to live must have been unimaginable and unbearable only surviving by burning wood in their tiny uninsulated wooden houses.
I wonder what it must have been like for the last people in the town....
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