Saturday, July 9, 2011

Ghost Town Gourmet

I'm currently on a "business" trip with The World According to Rich around California and one of the stops on this trip was Bodie, California, considered one of the best preserved ghost towns in the country.  Once a booming mining town in the 1880s with a population of over 10,000, the city soon fell into oblivion when the mine went dry and now it sits isolated and alone in the mountains near the California-Nevada border.

For videos of our trip, check out The World According to Rich's Vlog.

Meals at all hours?  Sounds good to me

Naturally, Greg's Gourmet was on the scene to survey the local gourmet.  First up is dinner at the Virginia Creek Settlement in Bridgeport, CA:

Hickory Pork Chops

New York Steak ordered by The World According to Rich

Virginia Creek is a house that they transformed into a small restaurant (and I guess they still live there).  It's got some cool old west decorations on the walls and is a nice establishment halfway between Bodie and Bridgeport.

For breakfast we enjoyed a hearty meal at the Hays Street Cafe, also in Bridgeport, CA:

Eggs, hash browns, and biscuits

Hays Street Cafe I think was also a house at one point that was transformed into a restaurant.  Food was good.  Service was good.  US 395 is a surprisingly nice, scenic drive.  I was thinking it would be boring desert most of the way up but it's actually got a lot to see. 

I would have liked to dine here, but it closed down during the Taft administration

If you ever get the chance to check out Bodie, do it.  We were there for about 4 hours and only saw a fraction of it, so be ready to spend the day.  Once one of the wildest cities in the west it's now in a state of arrested decay with about 200 structures of the once 2000 that were in these mountains.  I'll be posting pictures on my Facebook, so if we're not friends we probably should be.

Bodie

BONUS!

Here's a 4 minute vlog put together by The World According to Rich with video from our time at Bodie:


Thanks for reading!