Kings Canyon National Park

These pictures were taken in Kings Canyon National Park on August 19, 2010. We first drove to a place called "Roads End Permit Station," appropriately located at the end of the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway. We then went on a spectacular 9.4 miles long hiking trail, surrounded by canyon walls, huge boulders, big trees, Manzanita bushes and the beautiful Kings River. A couple of backcountry hikers told us they had just seen a female bear with her cub. We ran into another group of hikers who had spotted two rattle snakes on a sunny patch of the trail surrounded by boulders. One of them lifted the snakes with a pole and threw them away from the path (not a recommended operation as we later learned). We ended the hike with a swim at Muir Rock. The last two pictures were taken on the car trip back to our camp, along the Kings Canyon Road.

Sequoia National Park

The pictures on this post were taken at Sequoia National Park in August. The big trees are giant sequoias which can live up to more than three thousand years and are resistant to fire and disease. There are several groves of these giant trees in the park with a large concentration of them at "Giant Forest." The world's largest tree (in terms of volume) is the General Sherman Tree.

The picture with Vlada and I shows Moro Rock in the background (also on the picture at right). It was taken at a place called "Bobcat point." The rustic cabin where we stayed, at Grant Grove Village, is shown on the left.

Orchard Camp Trail

Our summer trip did not start auspiciously. The day after we arrived in Monrovia, we got up early to go hiking with Marina to Orchard Camp in Angeles National Forest. We started the hike when the sun had barely risen. Despite the fact that it was early and because it was a Sunday, we ran into several people on the trail, including a nice elderly man walking up the steep trail with a cane. I asked him about some of the wild aromatic plants which grow all over these hills and which I did not know by name. Then Marina got ahead of Vlada and I at her customary fast pace. After a while we heard screams which we took at first to be those of a bird. It turned out that it was Marina running back down the trail calling for help. Shortly before arriving to Orchard Camp, she had been attacked by a swarm of extremely aggressive bees which likely were Africanized honey bees also called "killer bees". When Marina got near us, bees had bitten her on her scalp, torso and arms.

As Vlada and I helped her get rid of both the bees embedded in her hair and their stingers, Vlada got bitten on his ankle. We turned back, warning people along the way of the danger ahead. One couple headed to Mount Wilson also turned back but most people chose to go ahead. During the walk back, Vlada's forearms started to turn red, as well as his neck. More concerning to him was the fact that his chin started to feel numb. We suspected that during the chaotic episode when we were removing the bees from Marina, he might have stepped in a bush of poison oak. In any case he was developing an allergic reaction to either poison oak or the bee sting. We sped up down the trail, all the while debating between bee stings and poison oak, called Katarina for medical advice, got to Marina's car and drove to Grandma's house.

The following afternoon, after returning home from a visit to the LA County Arboretum (see picture of pomegranate tree at left taken there), Vlada's ankle was swollen. It was still very swollen the next day. This did not bid well for a trip where we were planning to do a lot of hiking in the National Parks. Fortunately, after taking a medication, the swelling subsided. After three days in Monrovia, we were good to go.

Vlada's family - Vladina porodica

Last March, Vlada and I borrowed some family pictures from his grandma Milica who lives in Monrovia, CA. I had planned to scan them but only got around to taking pictures of them with my digital camera before we return them to Milica this summer.

Here are few of them. The people in these pictures are Milica (standing on chair in Belgrade around 1920), grandma's own grandma (also called Milica) who lived to be one hundred and three, Marjana (Vlada's mom and daughter of Milica) with her brother Buda in the mid 1940s, Buda with his cousin Bata and mother Milica in Rakovica (outskirts of Belgrade) in the mid 1950s, Vlada and his mom in 1964, Vlada and Katarina in June 1966 and Vlada siting on a chair pretending to smoke in 1968.

Wave Hill, Bronx, June 2010

Today for a change, no pictures of the High Line but from a public garden in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx called Wave Hill. You get there by taking a train at Grand Central Station. It is usually a serene place, even on Saturdays when entrance is free. It has amazing views of the Hudson River and of the New Jersey Palisades across the river. The garden is home to many birds and a few other critters (squirrels, chipmunks, frogs).

This was a hot spring day with lots of flowers in bloom including poppies, lavender, cotton lavender (yellow flowers at right), russian sage (petrovska) and clary sage. For the first time, we saw cardamom and galangal. That evening, Vlada and I went to see the latest film by Goran Paskaljevic ("Honeymoons"), which was playing at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and later that evening we went to the Blue Note to listen to a jazz band (Sveti) lead by the fantastic drummer Marko Djordjevic.

The High Line, 7am, May 2, 2010

This Sunday morning, Vlada had to be at work at 7am. I took advantage of his schedule to get up at the same time and go walk on the high line early, before the crowds start coming. The line was not yet open at this time last year, so this was the first time I got to see the sage and other plants in full-bloom.