Thursday, October 16, 2008

Calico Ghost Haunt Mini-tour

For 12 years we have been traveling the 8 hours to Yermo (outside Barstow) California to perform at a theme park I used to visit as a child. Calico Ghost Town is an actual town that went ghost-town when the silver mines dried up. After changing hands a number of times the town is now run by the county and it's basically an old west themed amusement park...no roller coasters or twirling rides...still it attracts a lot of visitors from around the world. They have several festivals over the year. One is their Ghost Haunt held over the two weekends leading up to Halloween. They take the old Maggie mine and turn it into the greatest spook house in the world. After being scared out of your skin you come out the top of the mine and come off the hill where the Livery Stable Stage and the Kent Family Magic Circus performs their show.
This is the only time of year we perform our Cremation illusion and a few other "seasonal" tricks. We love the audiences up here and the area is packed to the point where you can hardly move. It's fun!
Well, the drive went smoothly...I noticed that late morning starts feel longer than early morning starts. Late night drives go fairly quickly too. We have our regular stops and can figure the eta of our trip by the stops. One stop is a gas station outside of Bakersfield. The last three times we have stopped there we have arrived just as a tour bus with Chinese tourists arrived....they flock right to the rest rooms clogging things up for so long that we had to just leave. Today the bus was there but this time they were loading into the bus so the bathrooms were open and the visit went quickly.
Nothing special happened today on the drive. We passed cotton fields and corn fields. We passed citrus trees and walnut trees. We drove by Andrews Air Force Base and a billion sage brush. There were Joshua Trees and purple mountains. It was a nice drive.

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