Visiting Calico Ghost Town, California

Disclaimer: This trip to Calico was another impromptu stop on the trip (albeit a rather nice one)!

On the drive to Hollywood after 3 days in Las Vegas (which was so much fun but more of that in another post soon), my friends and I figure we might as well break up the journey with a stop somewhere.

Thing is, there wasn’t really much to see and then one of our friends found something on Google about Calico Ghost Town and we figured we’d stop there.

For those who aren’t as familiar with Ghost Towns, these are not towns where Ghosts exclusively live 🙂 (Hehehe!) but instead, these are old towns that used to be bustling with activity and are now just a shell of its old self as people don’t live there anymore…

…or at least that’s what we thought when we made a decision to go there.

After about 30 minutes of walking around and checking out the shops, it suddenly dawned on me that things in this ghost town seemed just a little bit too shiny and a tad too new.

I went back on the ‘inter-webs’ and found out that the ghost town as it stands is a restoration of what it looked like back in its heyday.

Some parts of it have been made to look more ‘Western’ than it originally was but Calico itself was a genuine mining town.

Faith restored that at the very least in some part it was a (partial) representation of history, we proceeded through the town to explore what else it had to offer.

Okay, the ghost town is not necessarily the most exciting place in the world but it’s great to visit when you have friends with you – especially the kind of friends that can turn even a trip to the dentist into the most exciting trip and I think this is why I really enjoyed it here and have fond memories of the place.

We were all semi-nursing hangovers from Vegas but that didn’t stop us from horsing around.

I also imagine this is a fun place to take kids to (make of that what you will about me and my friend’s mental ages) but what I didn’t expect is that it’s a place to bump into celebrities in!

Just as we were leaving, I spotted Ed Westwick (Chuck Bass of Gossip Girl) – who’s actually British in real life arriving with his friends!

Not sure if this is a British thing – this whole fascination with the Wild Wild West as Ed and his friend also seemed really into the ghost town but I didn’t overthink it at this point.

I popped over and said hi (in the most un-cool kinda way) and he was very nice and rushed by my friends (who were eager to continue the drive to Hollywood – and perhaps, even more so to find a place to get lunch), I got a quick photo and hot-footed it to the car! 🙂