Dan's Outside

I go, I see, I do, I walk, I think, I like…

Interesting Bodie Story at SF Gate

I just came across an interesting story about the ghost town of Bodie at SF Gate. Bodie is the abandoned mining town (and California state park) east of the Sierra Nevada between Bridgeport and Lee Vining in a particularly inhospitable part of the high desert. The story does a fine job of relating the difficulties of living there in the winter, claiming that by some measures it is has some of the roughest winter conditions in the lower 48 states.

March 23, 2010 Posted by | Commentary | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Interesting Bodie Story at SF Gate

California Spring Flowers

Despite the concerns about low rainfall this year in parts of California, there are some hopeful signs of a decent and perhaps even quite good spring wildflower bloom. A few notes:

  • I have visited Muir Woods twice during the past few weeks (some photos at my other site) and last weekend spectacular trillium flowers were just beginning to bloom
  • There have been reports of some very spectacular – though perhaps a bit early – blooms of the California Golden Poppy. One that is getting a lot of attention is in an area of a recent fire along the highway following the Merced River up into Yosemite Valley.
  • Today I saw some fairly good photographs of flowers in the southern California desert, where there actually has been some real rain this season.

For my part, I’m afraid I didn’t get at all so far this weekend to look for flowers – I seem to have a pretty nasty cold!

March 14, 2009 Posted by | Commentary | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on California Spring Flowers