TRAVEL TALES : DIG INTO THE FUN OF CALICO DAYS.

Byline: Susanne Hopkins Daily News Travel Editor

You won't find silver tumbling out of the hillsides, but you might discover a wealth of fun at Calico Days in the ghost town of Calico.

The 30th annual event with its circa-1880s activities will be held today through Sunday in the hillside town where $68 million in silver was hacked out of the earth in the late 1800s and which also yielded $45 million in borax, a crystalline salt used for soldering metals and manufacturing such items as glass and soap.

Stuck in the high desert less than 10 miles from Barstow, Calico is an intact Old West town where prospectors once laid down the law with six-shooters.

``It's better than any movie set. It's the real thing,'' said Don V. Tucker, coordinator for Calico Days, which celebrates the town's 30 years as a San Bernardino County park.

``On parade day, it's as if you're standing in the middle of an old mining town with a lot of the old miners, saloonkeepers and dance-hall girls,'' added Tucker.

The parade - which Tucker describes as the ``most colorful parade outside the Rose Parade'' - is one of the highlights of the annual event. This year, it will be held at noon Saturday, with country singer Lacy J. Dalton as grand marshal.

Thousands of folks traditionally line the narrow main street of the town to watch the parade with its colorfully costumed participants ambling by, Tucker said. Marching bands, western and American Indian riders and horse-drawn wagons are also part of the spectacle.

While family-oriented, the atmosphere is admittedly rather raucous, Tucker said. There's a gunfighting championship that draws sharpshooters not only from California but also Nevada and Arizona. Mountain men set up camp, and living history tours are given all three days.

Visitors can learn the art of tossing a frying pan in the fry pan pitch; there's a wild and wooly prospector's burro race and what are called ``boomtown'' contests typical of Calico's heyday: bean bag toss, pole climb, egg toss, dart shoot and milk can toss, among them. Entertainment in the form of bands, line dancing and an Old West medicine show is also featured.

And for the rough-and-ready guys, there's a He-Man Triathlon that involves wrestling rocks, loading an ore cart with gravel and arm wrestling.

``And if you like a western barbecue, have it in an old ghost town,'' Tucker said. ``You really do feel like you're in the Old West.''

Calico's 23 businesses, ranging from Maggie's Mine, where you can explore some of the tunnels, to a basket shop and Lil's Saloon will offer a variety of other activities, from candle dipping and rope making to bubble-gum blowing.

It's all an effort to re-create the days when Calico was a wild mining town. Established in 1881, the town was known as one of the richest strikes in Southern California. But the ore played out and the town died. In 1951, Walter Knott of Knott's Berry Farm fame bought the town and restored some of the buildings before turning it over to San Bernardino County.

Today, said Tucker, 25 percent to 30 percent of the buildings are original. The several adobe buildings damaged in an earthquake in March have been restored.

``All the buildings are back as if it were 1880, 1881,'' Tucker said.

Calico Days offers Los Angeles residents a unique opportunity, he said: ``They can get away from the L.A. traffic - and what they run into is horse traffic.''

I-15: Travel back in time

Calico is north of Ghost Town Road, three miles off Interstate 15 and eight miles north of Barstow.

Hours are 8 a.m. to dusk daily. Shops are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Calico Days festivities begin at 9 a.m. each day and continue until 10:30 tonight, 11 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday.

Admission to Calico Days is $7 adults, $4 juniors age 6 through 15. Camping in canyons below town costs $15 a night, $22 with hookups. Information: [phone].

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Photo: Experience Calico's years as an 1880s silver-mining boom town this weekend during the annual Calico Days.

Box: I-15: Travel back in time (See Text)