Travelling Lore

Initially, I was a little skeptical about going to a ghost town.  I'd never heard of Bodie before, it was a long drive away, I didn't think it would be that interesting (I'm not a gold rush history buff), and I thought that it might be too touristy.  Well, once we arrived and got past the initial sticker shock of the entrance fee (our Golden Poppy annual pass didn't cover this Bodie Historic State Park ), I quickly changed my mind about Bodie. Bodie, or "Boomtown Bodie," is a gold-mining ghost town in California that was named after William Bodey, who had discovered gold in 1859 (along with three other prospectors) in some hills north of Mono Lake.  Unfortunately, he froze to death in November of that year, before the town was named in his memory.  Mining started off slowly due to richer finds in other areas of the U.S.  However, the collapse of Bunker Hill Mine exposed a rich vein of silver and gold ore in 1875, which kicked off the boomtown.  ...

The day after our failed attempt to see Crater Lake  (an excuse to go back again!), we departed our beloved Railroad Park Resort and started to make our way to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  To break up the drive we ended up stopping at McArthur-Burney Falls State Park .  Honestly, we weren't expecting much, but once we arrived our expectations were quickly blown out of the water. Burney Falls is an amazingly picturesque waterfall.  It reminded us a lot of Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia given how the falls take many different paths downward into the pool rather than via one giant waterfall mouth.  And to top it all off, the lighting was perfect that day for photographs.  We both rented cameras for this trip to see if we might want to purchase them down the road, so we spent some time adjusting different shutter speed settings to "smooth" out the flow of the waterfalls in the photos. The waterfall is very much the centerpiece of the p...

Wow, it sure has been a while since I last sat down to publish a travel blog post on Corking Around!  Time flies when you're busy planning your wedding, getting married, honeymooning, and meeting deadlines at work!  For those who don't know, my now husband and I got married at the end of June at a local winery with our closest family and friends.  The weather couldn't have been more perfect, the food was delicious, the wine flowed all night, and we had lovely company!  A week after we got married we jetsetted off to Northern California for our honeymoon!  I finally have some time to share my Instagram photos with you from our trip.  Don't worry, there will be more substantial posts in the future! We started off in San Francisco.  One of my "must do" activities was to finally  try a real bowl of ramen for the first time--none of this instant noodle stuff from the grocery stores!  I loved it!  And spicy sure does mean spicy! We...