‘An epic saga filled with love, lust, danger, adventure, loyalty and betrayal. A family’s heroic struggle against the nature’s fury in the Sierra Nevada mountains chronicled by those who lived through it and survived! It’s the story of …..’ Ah, well, not quite I guess. Actually it was our first vacation to Yosemite valley after moving from Moscow (Idaho) to Santa Barbara (California) and I’m writing about it because it was memorable.

A pleasant town Santa Barbara and we looked forward to living there but after a few weeks we realized it was really boring! The most exciting thing that happened while we lived there was the appearance of four water spouts offshore which then moved inland inundating a few parking lots. We’d seen all the sights and there was not much outdoor activities except the beach which is covered with sticky tar blobs from ocean oil seepage and some wimpy hill trails. The majority of the area’s wildlife could be seen at the beach (especially at night near the university) but that wasn’t exactly the outdoor experience we desired for out child.

We tried to make the best of the situation by hiking the hills around town where typically the only wildlife we encountered were snakes and the occasional yellow banana slug (typically about 6 inches long). Finally after our son was born we’d had enough. We needed a vacation. At the time Yosemite seemed like a good choice.

In those days the Yosemite experience was different than it is now. For one thing we could drive our car into the valley itself. Of course it crowded even back then and we had to reserve a campsite. In fact, they assigned us a campsite which consisted of a concrete floor and three partial concrete walls with a canvas roof and front. Out front was a picnic table and a fire pit for cooking. Actually it was quite luxurious compared to our usual camping arrangements.

This formed our base of operations to explore the valley. Packing our son on my back almost papoose style (except he was facing forward and could see most everything I could) we set out exploring. After several days we felt our energy returning and ventured further afield.

I don’t exactly remember which narrow trail we were on when it happened. There we were, the whole family me, my wife, our daughter and our son on my back enjoying the scenic surroundings when we heard a noise behind us. Turning around we spied a grizzled, brown walking rug moving toward us. It was the gauntest, leanest, meanest looking bear I’d ever seen. Not particularly tall he was nonetheless very impressive looking. All the bears I seen before (and since) at least had bellies and usually rather substantial ones at that. This bear was different. He was a walking rug! I swear you could see his backbone from underneath and it made me very nervous. He looked hungry. I wished he’d stop licking his chops!

The only thing I could think of was to get off the trail and let him pass but the trail was narrow with one side sloping down to a lake and the other side flanked by a cliff. We were trapped and if this character was that hungry there wasn’t much I could do about it.

Fortunately we were at one of the few wider spots on the trail so I herded the family up the small slope by the trail as far as we could go. We were no more than 15 or 20 feet from the trail edge but it was the best we could do as the bear continued determinedly to advance. Warning the family to be both quiet and still we watched and waited.

Our (less than one year old) son seemed fascinated by the bear as it got closer and started pointing at the bear while vocalizing his pleasure at the sight. Desperately we tried to quiet him but without much success. He just wouldn’t be quiet. He was having a great time! We tried everything short of choking him but nothing worked. If it wasn’t so serious it would have somewhat comic to see the contortions that two grown adults tried to soothe an uncooperative baby in the wilderness. We were in trouble and inevitably the noise caught the rugs attention.

Pages:
1 2 next page »»

Tags: family

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

this article with others.