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"Molly Herman caught this bear in Yosemite Park, April 18, 2003."

    Well, not exactly, but it's kind of a hard picture to resist. The bear stands in the Yosemite Village General Store and my guess is that something close to this pose is snapped by at least half of each year's Yosemite visitors, of which there are about 4 million.

    And therein lies a problem (with the 4 million, not the bear). More on this later, but first, we have to pass through Bakersfield.

Bakersfield, you see, is a great place to stop for the night when you are trying to drive all the way from San Diego to Yosemite in one day but the lighter plug in your towed car crumps out just as you are leaving and the Brake Buddy* won't work and your wife has to go and find a mechanic in a strange city who will drop everything and fix it and you finally get off, but not until two hours later, and then it starts to blow about fifty miles an hour and spit rain and you just know you don't want to be climbing into the foothills of the Sierras after dark in the rain driving a forty foot bus. Thus, Bakersfield, boyhood home of the estimable Buck Owens (on the right, above), if not each of the Buckeroos.

    (* The Brake Buddy is an ingenious device which sits on the floor of the towed car and         automatically applies the car's brakes in proportion to the brakes being applied in the RV,     all without a lot of wiring and no messing with the hydraulics of either the car or the RV.         But it needs power from the cigarette lighter, and on this particular day, that wasn't going     to happen. Mary found the mechanic who not only did drop everything to help us out, but     was downright friendly about the whole thing. If you ever have car trouble in San Diego,     Dan at Becka Automotive is your man.)

    Buck, if you recall, was the co-star of Hee Haw in the 70's. (Quiz--who was the other star, the one who played the banjo?) He's still at it, back in Bakersfield at his own dinner theater, Buck Owens' Crystal Palace. We went in after setting up in the KOA north of town and most of us (I made everybody go) had a great time, listening to some good country music ("I've Got a Tiger By the Tail" is probably Buck's signature tune) and even being moved to dance a couple of times. This latter was too much for Ben who literally hid his head inside his jacket. "It wasn't the music," he said, "it was the old people dancing".

    Then, on to Yosemite.

Yosemite is one of the most beautiful and moving places on earth; a hidden valley carved by the glaciers with dramatic sheer cliffs and waterfalls at every turn. Its problem is one being faced by such places everywhere (Monhegan Island comes to mind)--it's being simply overwhelmed by too many visitors. We were there in mid-April, not the high summer season (although it was school vacation in parts of California), and it still felt like Kennebunkport in August.

Tour busses, lines at the store, endless circling for a parking place, and hikes where you pass someone (or, in my case, they pass you) every five minutes--not exactly the stuff of solitude and the contemplation of nature. I can't imagine what it must be like in July.

The their credit, the Park Service is wrestling with this issue on an on-going basis and clearly understands the conflict inherent in its basic charge--to make America's natural wonders accessible while at the same time preserving and protecting them for future generations. There's no easy answer to this one, but some steps seem pretty obvious, like getting the cars out of at least some of the parks altogether and doing shuttle busses or some other alternatives. It seems to me that something like this has to come--at least to the more crowded parks--in the pretty near future.

One of the best parts of our visit to Yosemite was hooking up with Phoebe Hazard, daughter of Bruce and Wendy Hazard, old friends from Belgrade, Maine. Phoebe is an outdoor experience instructor with the Yosemite Institute which works with middle and high school groups which come to the Park for week-long stays. It's always fun to have someone with local knowledge providing advice, and Phoebe gave us a terrific short course on Yosemite, if only for our next visit. She's a terrific kid and has that wonderful Hazard smile, as you can see.

Yosemite is full of streams, especially at this time of year, all running into the Merced River, which, along with the glaciers, was the architect of the valley. Molly and Ben tried to get me to jump in swearing it was warm; I knew better. I keep telling them that I was born at night, but it wasn't last night.

One of the jewels of Yosemite isn't a waterfall or day hike, it's the Ahwanee, the classic old hotel on one edge of the valley. Built in the Twenties, the common spaces--like this wonderful reading room--have a special grace and unpretentious charm characteristic of the great lodges of the west. We've learned that you can experience and enjoy these places by having a meal in the dining room (or a Coke in the bar in this case) which is considerably less expensive than staying in the rooms.

Yosemite to San Francisco isn't that far (which may be one of Yosemite's problems) and on the way, you see this amazing sight--electricity producing windmills on all sides of the pass. We couldn't count them all, but there seemed like at least a thousand, all silently turning against the blue of the sky. There's such a project planned for the western mountains of Maine; I hope it goes forward, if only so we can gain some experience with this form of renewable energy.

Well, how's this for a view from the front of the RV? We're in the San Francisco RV Resort which has to have some of the most spectacular sites of any RV park in America. We're right on the ocean (OK, so it was an extra ten bucks, so what?) and it's like having a million dollar condo at Malibu.

Lest you think I'm exaggerating, here's the view from the driver's side window. What a spot, and about twenty minutes from downtown San Francisco.

It's hard to know where to start in a visit to the Bay Area, but our great location in Pacifica allowed us to see sights (and friends) both in the city and south in Silicon Valley. Here's the view from downtown, west toward the Coit Tower and the Golden Gate.

A slice of Chinatown, where we had dinner the first night in town (the Nan King, which turned out to be one of the best Chinese restaurants in the city). As we were about to order, Peter, the owner, said, "You've never been here before? I'll order for you, family style, and you'll like." He did and we did.

One of the friends we visited was Barney Osher, originally from Maine, who is a leading citizen of San Francisco but has remained a benefactor of Maine education and friend to many back home. Notice Ben got Molly more fully in the picture this time.

And of course, we had to visit Alcatraz. Here's the view back toward the city on the way out to the Bay's most (in)famous island.

Approaching Alcatraz; I couldn't help thinking what it must have been like to see this sight knowing you might never leave the island once the boat docked. The island was only a federal prison for about thirty years (1934 to 1963), but it's forbidding image is indelibly imprinted on America's consciousness.

Mom and Molly on the audio tour, which was very effective--with the voices of former guards and inmates and the repeated sounds of iron doors slamming shut. We even saw Al Capone's cell. I found the whole thing sort of creepy--thousands of tourists trooping through a place with such a dark history.

There are lots of nice things about California, but gas prices isn't one of them. A fill up (of the car, thank goodness) was over $30.00.

The next day was one of the most exciting of the whole trip (I know because the kids told me so). We had the extraordinary opportunity of visiting Skywalker Ranch, the home of George Lucas' far-flung movie enterprise. Here is Molly in front of the main house which serves as a sort of corporate headquarters. George Lucas is vitally interested in education and has established a foundation to support educational reform, especially in the area of technology. They had contacted me last winter about Maine's 7th grade computer initiative (they like it) and mentioned the possibility of visiting the ranch when we were in the area (it's about thirty miles north of San Francisco). We didn't have to be asked twice.

And, amazingly, we got to meet George Lucas himself, who was, as great people usually are, completely unpretentious and approachable. In my experience, the really first rate talents are usually pretty normal; it's the second tier celebrities who tend to be prima donnas.

What do you say when you meet George Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars saga and Indiana Jones as well as the father of the modern marriage of technology and movie making? I told him that, sure, I liked Star Wars, but my favorite of his movies was American Graffiti--because it so perfectly captured the feel of my high school experience in the sixties. It turns out that both of us graduated from High School in the same year and it was that year he immortalized in Graffiti.

Did you know that Suzanne Summers was the girl in the T-bird?

On Saturday, we met up with John and Peggy Perkins at the farmers market downtown; Peggy (here with daughter Addy) is a second cousin of Mary's whom she had met through the internet but never in person before this visit. After lunch, we all went to one of San Francisco's neatest attractions--the Exploratorium, an incredible hands-on science museum, ostensibly for kids.

Ben experiments with air currents and a column of smoke; we stayed about four hours and still didn't see all the exhibits. For the third or fourth time on the trip, we used our membership in the Childrens' Museum of Portland to get free admission--so that membership has paid for itself a couple of times already.

So, Alcatraz, the Exploratorium, the Transamerica Pyramid; what's left? Ghirardelli Square, of course, for chocolate, ice cream, and a silly hat for Molly (you'll see it at Halloween). Alas, about the only thing we missed was a cable car ride, but you have to save something for next time.

On Sunday, we drove (the car) south, to visit our friend Josh Stern from Brunswick who is a first year student at Stanford. What an incredible place to spend four years--

At the heart of the new economy in any region of the country is a knowledge factory, and Stanford in many ways is the parent of Silicon Valley.

I have visited this area several times over the past five years and the change from when I was here in 2000--at the height of the tech boom--was amazing. Far less traffic, smaller crowds on the streets of the city, and miles of vacant buildings, all are noticeable symptoms of the drastic fall of the technology sector in the last three years. It will come back, but the transformation is an object lesson of the dangers of having all your economic eggs in one basket. Thank goodness I wasn't more successful in my efforts to bring some of these now non-existent jobs to Maine; be careful what you wish for.

Here we are with Josh; great young man--now all we have to do is figure out how to get him back to Maine.

Speaking of guys from Maine, here's Avie Tevanian, originally from Westbrook, who is now one of Apple's top executives, with his wife Nancy and daughter Anna; I keep trying to get him to move Apple to Portland, but I guess Steve Jobs has something to say about it and he likes Cupertino.

And here are two more of Mary's very good friends--Cindy Sterne whose dad, Eugene,was Mary's dad's roommate in college; and Sue Coe Adams whom Mary has known since summer camp in Canada in the --, well let's just say a while ago.

And finally, headed north, across the Golden Gate--Willets, Eureka, and on to Oregon. Eureka, indeed; see you there.