Ahwahnee Hotel

It's not unusual that questions might arise regarding the Interior Department's decision to award the contract for operating concessions at Yosemite National Park to Delaware North Cos. Inc., a company with no experience in park operations. The concerns arise not only because Yosemite is the crown jewel of the national park system. There are other factors.

A combination of a heavy snowpack and a hot weekend followed by a fierce rainstorm caused flooding Monday that shut down Yosemite Valley, drenching campgrounds and meadows, displacing campers and leaving bridges and a few swaths of roadway underwater. Park officials said some visitors headed out early in the morning as the valley was lashed by rain, but hundreds of others would be put up Monday night in spare lodging until the water begins to recede.

Heading for the hills during a season of changeable weather is always a gamble. But taking the chance can carry a big payoff, as we found during a weather-filled weekend in Yosemite. That weekend the park's lodgings were all full (except for the shabby little cabins at Yosemite Lodge), but the throngs that swarm over the valley in summer were absent nearly everywhere else in the park.

The former Desmond's department store building, an Art Deco landmark in the Miracle Mile district of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, has been purchased by developers who plan to add a luxury condominium tower to its site. The planned improvements follow several projects already underway on a once-glamorous stretch of Wilshire that struggled economically for decades until the city's core became fashionable again a few years ago. Legacy Partners, a Foster City, Calif.

Yosemite was a constant touchstone in the life of Virginia Best Adams, the sometimes collaborator, sometimes publisher and overall steadying influence in the life of her husband, the late photographer Ansel Adams. But her roots to Yosemite, the park her husband helped make famous in his classic photographs of Half Dome and the Yosemite Valley, took hold much earlier and flourished far longer than the better-known Ansel's.

I remember the first time I saw California. It was 1967, an early spring just before the Summer of Love. I had dropped out of college and come chugging across the great American desert in a rusty Ford with no spare tire. My hair snaked down my neck and I was, in all respects, a cliche of the period except for one thing. I was not headed to San Francisco to be a revolutionary. I was headed here, to Yosemite. Having quit the academic life, I needed a place of refuge.

Yosemite Valley, the picturesque gash in the granite walls and domes of Yosemite National Park visited by more than 2 million people a year, will not be closed off to cars anytime soon, the National Park Service finally conceded Friday after nearly 10 years.

DEAR SOS: Bellapasta restaurant in Los Angeles serves spicy spaghetti with chicken and vegetables that is wonderful. I would like the recipe. --LINDA DEAR LINDA: You can prepare the marinara sauce and chicken in advance, leaving the cooking of the spaghetti and final assembly of the dish until you are ready to serve.