Mother in law /not/ eaten by bears September 24 - October 7, 2001 Well they really did not eat anybody, they cared about my mother just like about us (= not at all). But my feelings were rather tense.

	At Walker Creek, stumps of dead trees don't just lay around, they nicely stick up to the sky

	In a desert, your first glance tells you that you shall travel farther than the eye can see.

Arrival of my mother was anticipated with care. We wrote a formal invitation, helped tune her tickets, weighted various journey destination for a trip with a greenhorn. I planned to clean out our cupboard, scrub all corners, squeegee windows, at least sweep the balcony... a few days before her arrival I concluded that removing those larger heaps in the middle of our living room (pictures, books, magazines, videotapes, computer components, climbing gear, a notebook, camera bag, a few nondescript/universal backpacks) and wiping the dust would have to suffice. I confess I somehow did not manage even that .
A day before her arrival, my mom got a warning e-mail from me -- that she should (or so I hope) be aware of the fact that her daughter is an incurable heap-maker, who married another heap-maker, and to prepare for the worst.

	This flat spot is really a bottom of a crater of an ancient volcano, however a giant one.

I have no clue what my mom expected from our household, but I was bringing a rather disoriented person from the airport. Considering that they brought her vodka instead water on the plane, and an immigration officer wished her "da svidanya", the shape of our little nest had to be a neglectable hassle. Before we managed, over next few days, to explain that all these people meant well and Russians are welcome and nice people here, just like anybody else, and that she could probably not tell a difference between, say, a Korean and a Chinese, and no, we really would not think she looks like a Russian "babooshka", our heaps became (apparently) inconspicuous.

	Lowering the water surface in Mono Lake gave rise to thousand years old stiff sediments around former underwater gas and steam springs.

	These two, out of dozens of photographing crowds at Mono Lake, are my closest.

Thanks to my mom I had again a chance to behold America through a stranger's eyes. After living here for a year, I got used to many things, while my mother marveled at wooden houses, centenarians at car wheels, grocery stores open non-stop or at least till 10 p.m., automatic coffee refills at restauants, and excellent Asian cousines.

We chose our favorite loop for a weekend - on our anniversary, trees began to turn yellow, we had expected that within a fortnight they would turn into beautiful red. This time, we drove in the opposite direction -- Friday at Lake Tahoe, sleeping at a decent motel which, although operated by an Indian family, exceeded the usual Bombay Star standard). Our wagon took us up into Monitor Pass in the morning. Returning from a short hike to Leviathan Peak (8,985 feet), another car parked next to ours. We exchanged a few polite words on weather, camping and travel with its owner, and sped to Bodie, with a stop at Texan BBQ in Walker. Barbecue does not seem to be a big deal, you put (usually) beef into BBQ sauce and then grill. Texan style adds smoking the meats for hours and hours in a pit before grilling them. Well, in Walker, they have a cook who does not use industrial grade sauces, but his own recipe. We arrived to Bodie in an almost spherical state, immobile, and overstuffed.

	A meadow in Yosemite, a rare change to photograph my mother who this time did not run elsewhere for a better shot.

	Sid shaking his hand with El Capitan.

A heated Bodie at the end of summer was something completely different than Bodie with remains of snow. One believes readily that this gold mining town was notorious for its merciless weather pattern (high altitude versus desert -- you freeze or you fry, not a tree anywhere, only rocks, bushes, and ore mills). At a new exhibit -- a Dodge Graham truck from 1927 -- we met again the same guy from Leviathan. Exchanged niceties and took a picture of the truck.

Mono Lake remained on our list for Saturday - with sunset. It did not turn out to be special that day, despite heavy photographers' presence. My traveling memories will forever hold a snapshot of an array of tripods and stuck-out behinds.

Again there was no accommodation near Mono Lake, which is too close to Yosemite NP. On Friday I called around a few motels and hotels, and I kept getting surprised questions: "you mean... eh... for this Saturday????" with a tone appropriate as a reaction to an indecent proposition. We did not waste our time and went right for our forest spot near Buckeye Camp. The very place was taken, but we simply moved to another one, built a tent for us, and arranged the back of our car for my mother.

	The little ant near the edge to the left is my mom, Yosemite Valley in the middle, El Capitan to the right, from a side - why do they call this edge "The Nose"?

	What would bears do in this forest??? (... what about peeking out of the ferns????)

Mother was very agile since dawn, we reassured her that she would easily find our "bathroom", she just needed to run down to the river and walk along upstream a bit. We kept unwrapping ourselves from our sleeping bags for a while longer. We waiter for mother to return, quite so as she did not take spare car keys, and we did not want to leave our wagon all open; we also did not want her to be locked out from all the things within. Eventually we headed for the tub, hoping to meet her half way.

No luck -- she was not there. But since we found a pool steaming and empty, we loaded ourselves in and let it warm us up from the morning chill to nominal operation temperature. After another interested party arrived, we were already cooked enough and glady vacated the whole establishement.

At the car, mother ran up and down, quite heated up -- unfortunately not by a hot bath, but out of anger -- she took our words about a SMALL distance upstream literally (~50 yards) and did not expect it to require some ten minutes of brisk walk. Despite intense search up and downstream, wading through (icy) river, and scaling barbed wire fences, she could not find the hot spring. I had to demonstrate those ten minutes of walk in person. All cleaned at last, we were bound for a breakfast in Bridgeport. Bad luck again -- right before us, a whole busload of tourists lined up at the only decent food place in town and vicinity. We tried it again in Lee Vining, but crumbs and dirty tables, frowning service, and my vivid memory of moldy bagels convinced us to simply buy sandwiches at a gas station.

After driving a bit through eastern Yosemite, an intense scenery makes everybody stop at a pretty meadow with a creek. I immediately thought that the man who was changing his boots there seemed familiar. Of course -- it was the same person whom we had met on Leviathan Peak and in Bodie. We mentioned a hill we were planning to hike up on from Olmsted Point, perhaps so vividly that he decided to come along. We scaled it up in four people, then.

	A bear mother watches us -- I'm not sure, is she afraid, angry, or just bothered????

	This is the end of a bear audience, and they leave (there are all three of them, just look carefully)

Then we chose to drive to the other side of Yosemite Valley, on to Sentinel Dome - which represents several hours of switchback driving. William gave up -- to his loss, but I quite understand -- we all still had a minimum of five hours to drive to Silicon Valley, and if you have nobody to alternate with behind the wheel, your best chances lay in making the largest possible part of in during daylight.

To avoid always seeing the same places (we visited Sentinel Dome two weeks ago), we included another hike, to Taft Point. There was a queue to port-a-potties at the parking lot, and I opted for nearby bushes. When I caught up with Sid, I voiced my expert opinion that I just returned from a "bear" forest. Sid laughed that bears would certainly not live near such a populated area. I did not want to argue, but I thought something in the sense that he did not see the very bush I went to a bathroom to. And lo and behold! We marched forward just a few steps, when we almost stumbled over a crouching, mysteriously grinning ranger. I am slightly short-sighted, it took me a while to focus to the same place in fern that several other bedazzled tourists were gaping at. Not only one bear!!! THREE BEARS!!! And on top of that, it was a mother with two cubs. I glanced around for an escape route (the trail back was clear, in the other direction were several juicy and less mobile park visitors -- if I ran faster than they, perhaps the mother bear would busy herself tearing and eating them to omit me?), but the ranger interrupted my thoughts saying that he knew the bear mother and that she was well behaved. He was right -- the mother bear (quite small, by the way, but you can bet that small creatures are extra vicious), disgusted, reviewed the gathered crowds, turned her back on us, and strode slowly away. Little bears rolled behind with a noticably less dignity -- one tripped over something, began to yelp (which made me nervous again, for what if his mother decided that it was our fault???), and then straightened up somehow and followed his family.

We arrived to a breathtaking view of Taft Point, still carrying a festive air with us. It simply does no happen easily, to see three wild bears at some fifty feet... all we had ahead of us was Sentinel Dome and five hours driving home -- followed by impatient developing of films... (which, by the way, turned out worse than my acceptable digital camera shots you see on this page).

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