as ‘relaxing’ as ghost town hunting sounds, it really can be stressful. for one thing, most ghost towns aren’t really ghost towns, but 98% ghost town and 2% home for eccentrics, outlaws, meth heads, and crazy old men who want to know why you are snooping around taking pictures. the other reason, as exemplified in the above video, is that a lot of ghost towns are at the end of what are essentially ghost roads, and while my trusty war pony mini van has proven it’s tenacious unstoppableness time and time again, i still get worried that some day i am going to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere. i mean, in the video above, we are about 20 miles from the nearest town and on a road so skinny that we really couldn’t have turned around even if we wanted to. we were on bodie road right at the california / nevada boarder in search of an abandoned town called aurora. one hundred years ago there used to be the giant del monte mill right at the site where the road is washed out, but today there isn’t much left.
all of these ghost town roads are pretty much the same- they ever so slowly get worse, luring you further and further away from civilization, tempting you to go a little bit deeper until you get to the point where turning around becomes a moral dilemma. nobody wants to give up and be the one who turned around just before the prize was obtained. yet nobody wants to get stuck out in the desert and have to hike for two days to find a tow truck driver and explain to him that you really thought your mini-van would be able to make it over the pile of boulders in the washed out road. it really is stressful. so much so that after a day of ghost town hunting you feel like you need a massage and a vacation. but as they say, the journey is the destination, and every once in a while you get lucky:

The final show of the season was an anticipated one. A line wrapped around the building and the 122-seat theatre was easily packed. After suffering an injury from a fall earlier this year, Marta elected to continue the season’s performance schedule but changed the show to the “Sitting Down Show” in which she sat in a chair on stage and chronicled the history of the opera and the numerous show’s that she has presented over the past four decades. While getting the rundown of the performances was interesting, I was much more interested in hearing her talk about her own life and motivations. Involved in theatre and dance since her early childhood, it was clear that Marta had dreams and ambitions for the big-time, but perhaps started feeling worn out by the competitive wear and tear of trying to make it on Broadway. “The most rewarding things I have done in my life are the things that nobody asked me to do,” she said as she looked back. That, I thought, was a great thing to be reminded of.

We very nearly didn’t make it to the opera: as we were on the road and about half way to Death Valley, Meg got a call from her pregnant sister saying that she had gone into labor (a couple weeks earlier then expected) so we turned around and headed back to Oregon. Meg’s sister gave birth to a healthy baby boy a couple hours after we arrived, and once everything settled down with that Meg and I figured out that if we got in the car and drove pretty much non-stop back towards Death Valley we’d get to the opera just in time. We rushed down, arriving in Death Valley Junction less then an hour before curtains. After the performance, Marta sat in the audience to answer questions and sign autographs. We told her about our journey and Meg’s new nephew and Marta seemed genuinely touched; yet another little piece to go along with a long history of magic.