Jim Colbert Memorial Road Trip, Part 3 - Heading Home

June 21, 2009 - Home again, home again jiggity-jigg…

As soon as the alarm goes off I am back to regretting having bedded down in a place so far from our first stop of the day.    With over an hour drive to get back to Bodie and my strong desire to get there as close as possible to opening in order to beat the crowds and take advantage of the early morning light we are forced to drag ourselves out of bed before 7:00am.  A novel idea, but maybe someday I will take a vacation where I actually sleep in.  Without taking time for breakfast we begin to retrace our steps, heading south for the first time, past the cows and sheep, back through Bridgeport and Willow Springs, ever onward toward Bodie. 

Our Route - Day 3…

Of all the places we will have visited when the trip has ended, this will be the most emotionally charged stop.  I’d been to several of our other stops on trips with my father but Bodie has the most personal history.   Turning onto Bodie Road, my thoughts turn once again to the past.  I think back to the two times I came here with my father.  The first time I hadn’t known what to expect and was overwhelmed by how much there was to see.  The second time my father had been debating whether or not to try to make it to Aurora, Nevada and I pushed for a return visit to Bodie instead.  I got my second visit and he never made it to Aurora.  I recall the first memorial road trip, taken by myself on what would have been his 61st birthday, a small tin of his ashes riding shotgun, not ready to face the road completely without him.  As we approach town, I come back to the present excited to share Bodie with Courtney.

Pulling into the nearly empty parking lot, a handful of cars spread out across the dusty lot, it is clear that we have succeeded in being among the first visitors of the day.  Out of the car and cresting the small hill that lies between the parking lot and the town, my breath is once more taken away.  It is a spectacular sight to see the remnants of so many buildings still standing.   We pass through empty streets, peeking in windows, each building reminding me of one of my past trips.  I take pictures that I am sure I have taken before.  We head south along Fuller Street toward the Methodist Church; inside many of the original pews remain, holding silent witness before God.  Then east on Greene Street, past the James Cain house, once home to one of the richest men in town, now one of the residences for the park rangers who reside year round in town.  Into Tom Miller’s house, one of the few buildings that you are able to walk into looking at the layers of exposed wallpaper and linoleum flooring, countless years of dust covering everything. 

James Cain House…

Years of Dust…

Further along, up to the Bodie School House, weathered globe in the window.  Looking at the books still on the desks one could imagine the children were just out to recess and would be back any minute.  Further up Greene, up the hill until we are looking back down over what remains of the town, trying to imagine the past glory when the town housed 10,000+ people, remembering the more recent past, trying to be in the present and feeling both wonder and loss. 

The Old World…

A View of Town…

We head north, toward the Stamp Mill and the Burkham residence.  Toward my father’s house.  The ashes that rode shotgun on the first memorial road trip ended up here, a beautiful house with a bay window and nice porch just across the street from the mill.  There is even a little hint of picket fence still standing.  I pass around to the back of the house, to the window where I reached in and spread his ashes.  The weight of the moment is palpable.  I’m taken back to our past visits – I remember sitting on the porch of this house with him, a moment to catch our breath.  Then forward, I am carrying what is left of my father, helping him set up residence in his own ghost town.  And once more back to the present and the feelings that one can’t avoid.  I take some more pictures of the house, the porch, the window. 

Home Sweet Home…

I know it’s ridiculous, but my less rational side considers stories of photos taken and people who weren’t there showing up in the picture.  I imagine looking at these photos later and seeing a faint image of my father inside the house smiling back at me.  The chance for one last picture.  One more picture…just in case.  I give Courtney the hug that I wish I could give him, the hug I am so happy to be able to give to her.   We meander through town a bit more, paying a visit to Chinatown, passing through the Red Light District, and wandering out to the outskirts, but emotionally the visit is over.  The town is filling up.  Large groups of French tourists, pass by.  I’m pleased that people have traveled from so far to see this amazing site and hope that California’s financial troubles don’t mean the end of Bodie.

The Loneliest Outhouse…

Gone But Not Forgotten…

Our skipped stop from the day before is nearby and as we recoup at the car in what has become a very full parking lot I eye up a back road out of Bodie that could take us straight to Masonic without having to head back down to the highway.  Just a quick jaunt across a narrow, steep and winding dirt road cutting through the hills around Bodie.  As much as the idea of blazing our trail off the beaten path appeals (and knowing that my father would have approved of the off-roading), in the end I give in and choose the less direct route.  The old minivan wouldn’t have provided the smoothest of rides and based on condition of the road this “direct” route would probably take about as long as the highway.  So we backtrack one more time, down CA-270, up US-395 to Bridgeport, and onto CA-182 for a short distance before heading yet again off-road and into the hills.  As we wind our way through the hills I wonder why we hadn’t ever come this way on previous trips.  We’d been in the general area on at least three different trips and being so close to Bodie I would have thought this would have been a prime stop.  But I don’t recall having even heard the name as a potential destination.  Did he know about it and not want to go or did he just not know?  Heading up the mountain we pass the Chemung Mine, one of several old mines in the area and note the location for our return trip down the mountain. 

Remains of Chemung…

Mine With a View…

Many twists and turns, steep climbs, slow progress, and much internal debate.  We stop several times as I consult the map, not really being able to figure out exactly where we are, something my father seemed to be able to do fairly well.  I don’t know how far we’ve come, how far we still have to go.  I want to press on, I want to find Masonic, but the roads are getting more steep and the further we go the further we have to go to get back home.  Every turn we make I hope to see some glimmer of Masonic, and every time I am disappointed.  Eventually I pull the plug, feeling less like I let him down and more like I’ve let myself down.  We head back down the hill, stopping at the mine on our way.  The site is a bit newer than some of the others, having been founded around 1909 and continuing operation off and on until 1938.  Many of the buildings are still partially covered with corrugated metal, which apparently makes an attractive target for shotguns, being fairly riddled with buckshot.  I poke around for a little bit, take a few shots, and we are once again on our way. 

We are basically done with the trip, only the long journey home ahead of us.  I’ve looked into possible stops along the way; interesting vistas or short excursions off the main road but all of them are too much of a time commitment.  Instead we begin the drive back toward home, back toward normal life. 

Our Final Route - Circling Death Valley…

But there is still further remembrance.  Thinking that we should have something to eat we stop in Lee Vining, more memories of past trips – the motel where we stayed, the restaurant where we had breakfast, the church we walked by on our late night walk.  We pass Reward, a stop I made on my first memorial road trip – hot wind whipping past as I climbed the side of the mountain, pushing ever closer to the remains of a mine but never seeming to reach it.  Across the road, the remains of Manzanar – driving through the “streets”, talking history.  Further down are Lone Pine, Mt. Whitney, and the Alabama Hills – we stayed in Lone Pine on one of the first road trips we took when my father started using LA as a launching point for our annual road trips.  I stopped here again on the first memorial road trip, and just last year Courtney and I came to mark the passing of his birthday.  Close to home, the Red Rock Canyon State Park – he’d remarked a movie or two that had been shot here, named the town that was supposedly just over the hill in one of those movies.  And Vasquez Rocks – we’d made one last stop here for lunch on yet another trip and in extreme heat my sister and I had put on the coats we had brought in case the desert nights got a little chilly but hadn’t worn so he could take a picture of us, a picture I’ve found in the family slides he had.  These roads are filled with memories of him, but over the course of this trip I feel that something has changed.  This may have not been the last, but I suspect that trips driven solely by the past, trips to honor and memorialize him, are on the decline.  I think that I have come to accept that this is no longer his journey, that this is no longer about him.  Where I was driven by memories of the past, I feel more fueled by his spirit.  These are now my roads, and it is my turn to share them with others the way that he shared them with me.

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