the long way home!

liam and i particularly liked this image painted on a back of a van in yosemite.

we broke camp friday morning, the 1st. said our goodbyes and headed home. the long way home. we left via tioga pass. stopping by tuolumne meadows. this part of the park was very mellow-nice! liam got carsick and needed some down time to recover: see above photo. rhodie wanted to take us to "Bodie."which is why we took the long way home. she thought we'd like it. we loved it!!!!! bodie is an old ghost town now a state park. upper desert-about 8000 feet with a gorgeous view of the eastern sierras. i was in heaven-i love the upper desert. the sage was strong and we met a shepard on foot with his 2 dogs and 800 sheep. that's another one of my dream jobs. sorry no pics-this was not something liam thought worthy of snapping-OH MY GAWD-is he really of my flesh and blood-obviously he takes after dad!)i took many shots but i'm still in the days of film.

there is only 5% of the buildings still standing-this place is awesome-antiques galore!-but you weren't allowed to take anything-liam said that bodie was his heaven and hell. he loved it but he couldn't take any of the treasures he found. i tried to explain that if everyone just took a little something pretty soon there would be nothing left. but i have to admit i had to slap my hands several times-there was so much cool stuff lying around. and when you peeked in the windows-my god! old sewing machines, woodstoves, beds-etc.! argh! but we were really good and didn't take a thing-man that was hard. here's more pics-


nice wooden spokes, eh?

here's the gold mine-liam loves taking pics in sepia.

this doll leg is my favorite picture!!!!!!

the best part of all we were surrounded by thunderstorms! it was incredible-lightening cracks and dark gray clouds-my favorite weather. when we viewed the museum they had a tribute to "rosa may" one of the local brothel owners. she was a beauty. little 6 year old raena was mesmerised by the displayed-taking tons of pictures of the "princess"-we all a great laugh-especially the rangers. i noticed she was buried outside the cemetery walls. next time i go i'm gonna put flowers on her grave.

we still had a long haul home so we had to hit the road-we drove thru lot's of smoke from a fire in topaz.-we watched the helicopter drop water from the lake. it was intense. we were starving and just couldn't eat fast food- we made it to reno to the wildoats deli right before it closed. god we were tired. we finally made it home -12 minutes past midnight-it felt good to be home.