A Road Trip Along Highway 395

I have always loved road trips. Before I had my son, I used to carry extra clothes, a blanket, pillow, and toiletries in the trunk of my '74 Chevy Nova. Sometimes I would leave to get a pack of cigs and not come home for a couple of days. I know, cheesy. But it's true.

Nearly everyday I struggle to resist the urge to revert to my spontaneous ways. Some days are more manageable than others.

I'd wanted to go to the ghost town of Bodie, California, for about a year and a half. This summer it finally happened. I work with a few people who used to live and work in the area around Bodie, and they suggested that we also check out the Tufa towers at Mono Lake while we were in the area. We drove 80 toward Lake Tahoe, and cut through 88/89 to Highway 395. It was a beautiful drive, and we had a lot of fun being silly in the car.

We decided to stop at one of the vista points overlooking Mono Lake. We spent a lot of time studying the stickers and graffiti on the guard rail, but we also became frustrated trying to figure out how to get to the highway below us. We later discovered that we found it by staying on the very highway we were stopped on.

Good times!