Whenever we're driving along a highway or a road somewhere and I see an old abondoned barn or farmhouse out in a field, I get the almost compulsive urge to just 'go through it'. Most of the time I'll say something to Suzanne like, 'Man, I just want to go through that building'. I say it about buildings we've passed a million times, and I never get out and do it, usually because the 400 isn't really a great place to park, but I love the idea.

So when this image of a streetcorner in the abondoned town of Bodie, California (above) appeared as the Wikipedia 'Picture of the Day' today, it got me to clicking. It turns out there are thousands of ghost towns in North America (6,000 in Kansas alone!) all just sitting there waiting for me to 'go through'. In Canada, the largest number of ghost towns is found in BC. There are some 1,500 abondoned settlements, mostly old logging and mining sites, but some fully realised towns like Barkerville (above), once the largest city north of San Francisco and west of Chicago.

In Ontario, the are close to 200, so I declare today that this summer, the coming, glorious Summer of 2007, will not only be the Summer of Toronto FC, but it will also be the Ghost Town Summer. To start, Suzanne and I drove out Highway 9 to just beyond Hwy. 50, and the former community of Ballycroy. An Irish place with a chopping mill, Ballycroy was known in the 1870s as a booming, if somewhat alcoholic, little town. Today, there is an ancient sign, a couple of old buildings that have been reclaimed, and a barbed wire fence that keeps visitors away from the real abandoned stuff. Maybe in the summer we'll make a trip back and hop the fence.