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  Teolumne Meadows
  August 1998

The last weekend of summer 1998 we went to Yosemite National Park, to Tuolumne meadows area. We arrived to the meadows at noon time and found out that it is not allowed to build a fire at high located Booth Lake - our destination and I stupidly left stove at home.
There were three of us - Dima, Jane and me. Our plans were changed to less ambition ones - just 6 miles flat walk to the junction of Lyell river and Ireland creek. There we could have a campfire.
So we took our time exploring the meadows themselves.
We climbed the surpassingly smooth granite of Lembert dome.
Great views of Teolumne meadows from the top.
Then we spend sometime bathing in warm creek.
Water was transparent and clean.
On our way to Ireland creek we were scared by elk running to the woods with the speed 30 miles per hour just in front of us. Then we saw the family of elks - mother with two small ones crossing the Lyell river. We pitch our tent already at the dusk.
I ate a few Kit-Kats on the empty stomach and didn't feel too good. For the dinner we had tasty kasha and Californian Merlot. We hide part of our food at the bear - proof container and the rest was just lying next to us on the logs around the campfire.
Here the fun began. In very short time the 200 kilo brown bear came over and took the food. He ate it right there despite of big fire and all our activity - making noise with cattle, slapping ,screaming…
In an hour another bear showed up - smaller with a big yellow tag in the right ear. He ate the rest. We can't do anything against them! Very scared we went to the tent for sleep. We were awoken a few more times - the bear come back and ate the canned food.
In the morning the camp was complete mess - shredded cans of beef ravioli, spots of either the bear blood or ravioli sauce all over. We felt very tired after that night - we had to came out a few times from the tent to scare the bears away.
After the breakfast - the food that was stored in the bear can wasn't touched, we went back to the parking lot.
There are a lot of nice places to swim at Tuolumne meadows. We swam in one of them and saw a lot of fish in the water.
Clean and odorless we got into the car and drove back in crisp 4 hours.
Photos by Dima Makarov