- During the summer, the park bustles with 1,000 visitors a day, roaming the streets, peering through windows, touring the looming stamp mill. (Fun fact: A bobcat recently used the stamp mill as a hunting ground to teach its young cubs.) The park has about 20 employees to handle these crowds, but during the winter, when roughly 15 “brave” (or maybe “insane”) visitors every month show up on their snowmobiles or skis—the 11-mile road between Highway 395 and Bodie remains unplowed in the winter—the staff is trimmed down to a skeleton crew.
This year, it’s five people. They live in one of the nine buildings that have been retrofitted for habitation with modern amenities like heat, electricity, and the internet, its signal bounced in from a satellite on the ridge. That’s fine enough most days, except when a gust of wind shifts it an inch and knocks out Netflix. Then, a ranger must climb the tower and tweak the satellite as they radio back into town: “Is it working now? Okay, how about now? Now?”
There is a law somewhere that says that if you can find an official map that defines a road somewhere, you can use that road. Friend of mine and I would find old maps with roads that no longer existed, and go ride our motorcycles down those tracks. We spent a lot of time in eastern California riding our sportbikes in places they never should have been. (He rode a Suzuki GSXR1100, I rode the Katana 600.) Getting out there in the boonies, on a old forgotten track, is amazing. Makes you feel really alive...