Bears and Bowling Balls

April 15-16

We packed up Easy Rider in the 65-degree sunshine at Sanchez St. in the Castro, and savored a final cup of tea, overlooking the hidden garden of our neighbor. We bid goodbye to this fragrant bower with two resident turtle doves, a little green humming bird, a lemon tree and a giant vine of pink and yellow roses, which bloomed as large as grapefruits. These California treasures had been just out of reach to us, untended and unharvested below.

It was hard to leave our local loved ones. We will miss them and Land’s End with its 300 shipwrecks under the surf, the Point Lobos surfers, the Sutro bath ruins, dinner at the Cliff House, Twin Peaks, Golden Gate Park, the Marin Headlands, St. Gregory’s of Nyssa church, the Sanchez St wiggle, brunch at the Presidio, the DeYoung, hiking up Bernal Hill, the giant rainbow flag at the top of Market and Castro, the Berkeley campus, Chez Panisse, and so much more. We will never forget the gauntlet of sad homeless folks, some of them stoned out of their minds, who set up camp on virtually every street corner and sidewalk.

At 11:15 a.m. Sunday we headed across the Bay Bridge, through Sacramento, climbing up into the Sierra Nevada mountains to Lake Tahoe. Just before the sign to Sutter’s Mill, where the 1949 gold rush began, we stopped at a gas station to buy tire chains. There was an ominous weather report.

As we drove through ill-fated Donner Pass, the temperature dropped. As the story goes, the infamous Donner party of westward pioneers survived the winter of 1846-7 here only by eating some of its own people. Luckier settlers moved quickly to tame this savage wilderness: just 50 years later, elegant Victorian hotels were welcoming tourists at nearby Lake Tahoe.

The snow showers began as we pulled into Tahoe City, where  our log cabin at The Cottages Inn offered a cosy respite. Red plaid wool blankets warmed the bed, and hunter’s caps and jackets decorated the walls. Thunder cracked to tell us the weather was taking a turn for the worse. Hot cider and Scrabble kept us out of trouble until supper time, which was next door at a lakefront lodge with a giant stone fireplace decorated with a magnificent buffalo head. We had come a long way from San Francisco’s vegetarian sensibilities.

The locals told us that bears might break into our car overnight if we left anything for them to eat. Even a scented chapstick might draw them in, after the long winter’s privations.

It started to snow in earnest.

The bears left us alone, but by morning, we had to sweep about 9 inches of perfect powder off Easy Rider. John looked longingly at the cross-country skiing possibilities. Instead, we headed south on 395 through Bridgeport—with a 1950s-style lunch at a hotel where Mark Twain once stayed.

 

The snow disappeared, and there were no other tourists. We drove past lakes and mountains shrouded in a cold fog, stopping only at saline Mono Lake, where alas the ranger station was closed for plumbing repairs.

 

The dwindling lake, which was requisitioned by Los Angeles for drinking water, was saved by a lawsuit, John discovered. Los Angeles had to pump some water back into Mono, and now its levels are rising.

We passed Manzanar, and remembered how Norman Mineta and others in Congress worked to win reparations for the Japanese interned during WWII . The Manzanar ghost village reminded us of the layout of the Nazi concentration camps. Of course there were huge differences; here there was food and medical care; there were no gas chambers, no death marches, no final solution.

We arrived at nightfall in Bishop, a classic all-American town in the Paiute Shoshone territory. The locals said the best dinner in town was at The Back Alley bowling alley. After unusually good T-bone steaks and baked potatoes, we strolled over to the lanes. They were swarming with a local league of bowlers, many of them from the local Native American Paiute tribe. An older man teased his preteen grandson, who earlier in the day had his first sex education class. “Which did you like better, the birds, or the bees?” he asked the boy.

A friendly Paiute woman was putting away her bowling ball, and invited us to sniff its surprising pineapple scent. “My boyfriend has a red ball that smells like cinnamon,” she said. The Dude and his bowling companions would have been as amazed as we were that Storm bowling balls now feature such exotic options.