Estate sales are difficult for many reasons. They involve so many decisions that are hard enough to make without experience, and those decisions are layered over with emotions. It requires enormous organizational skills, and lots of patience and energy. I helped with an estate sale recently and was astounded by the amount of work.
There is a new frozen yogurt shop in Three Rivers, appropriately named “Three Rivers Yogurt” and it is very well put together with a great product and service. (It is next door to Sierra Subs and Salads.)
A very high-end motel complex is in the planning stages for Three Rivers. The developer came to a town meeting and described it, then opened himself up to many questions from the audience. I went with a completely open mind, and left convinced that this will be very good for our community. This will be a class act and I believe”a rising tide lifts all boats”.
Mountain lions chirp, almost like a shrill bird. A cabin friend heard it while sitting around his outdoor fire ring in Silver City (4 miles below Mineral King), looked it up online and learned that yes indeed, that is the mountain lion’s sound at times.
People, we are getting slammed and bombarded on three fronts: email, real mail, and the telephone. Most of our incoming calls these days are from unidentified sources who do not leave messages. Most of our mail is solicitations for money. It takes me a pair of minutes or more to delete the unwanted emails several times every day. Does anyone actually respond positively to these solicitations? There must be some sort of success rate, because otherwise these highly annoying interruptions to life would cease.
If you have a spot on your shirt and spray it with OxyClean, don’t let it sit there and dry for a week; it will make a hole. (Bummer! I loved that dress for about 20 years!)
Dentists are artists, sculptors, and kind care givers. My dental experiences are limited, and I was kind of shocked by how unpleasant such a common experience actually is. My dentist, Dr. Darren Rich in Three Rivers, is OUTSTANDING! (and so is his staff)
If you wait long enough, maybe your pomegranate tree will produce fruit. Twelve years is a long wait, but this year it is producing about a dozen pomegranates, very small, but very real.
Where’s Chihuahua? This is the name of a bowl and a drainage with a seasonal creek that ends up near the pack station in Mineral King. It is up the Timber Gap/Sawtooth trail, on the way to Cobalt and Crystal Lakes. We were joined by The Farmer, Hiking Buddy, The Heir and his wife (I’ll call her Beauty), and the Nine-Year-Old for what we mistakenly thought would be a simple walk.
It was a hike. A Hike. A HIKE. A HIKE!
The Mineral King Valley is still green in August! We are partway up the first steep 1/2-mile of the Timber Gap Trail.
Choices and consequences. . . but it doesn’t list Sawtooth, Cobalt, or Chihuahua. Note the mileages on the sign – one would reasonably conclude that there is a .4 mileage difference between the 2 lakes listed here.
Looking toward Eagle Lake across the valley, The Farmer told the Nine-Year-Old that up on the ridge are 2 Indians on horseback, and then there are 3 wisemen leading 1 camel. Can you see this?
Nice of you all to wait, but I bet you will take off the minute I reach you. Beauty is sporty, young and fit. Hiking Buddy and I lagged a bit. The Farmer probably wished he could have lagged. Nine-Year-Old kept telling us he had never walked so many steps in his entire life, INCLUDING Knott’s Berry Farm!
Yep. They stayed well ahead of me. That’s the rock outcropping of Empire Mt. that’s visible from the Mineral King valley but isn’t the highest point.
The sign reads “TRAIL”, because there is an old unmaintained trail to Monarch and Sawtooth off to the left.
The Bigelow Sneezeweed was profuse at Groundhog Meadow, a name that has always puzzled me. They are MARMOTS, not groundhogs, and it is sort of a boulder field, not really a meadow. But it is always a relief to get there because the trail is steep, hot, and dusty. Really steep at the end!
A variety of Mallow.
An unknown with soft fuzzy leaves, definitely in the mint family because of its square stem. I first saw this 2 weeks ago on the walk up the secret trail.
Mountain Jewelflower is something I never noticed until this year, and now it seems to be everywhere.
Weird. A fungus? A lichen? Not a flower!
The way we kept Nine-Year-Old moving ahead (and ourselves) was the promise of water at Chihuahua Bowl.
Trail Guy and The Farmer filled all our bottles.
The views were wonderful, and we were thankful to plop down and eat our lunches. The Heir packed cold barley pop for his family, which I thought was a fitting complement to the Hot Tamales which kept Nine-Year-Old moving forward.
NOW where are they going?? Oh. Scouting out a route to the Crystal Lake trail so we don’t have to bushwhack back the same way we came.
It has been years since I went to Crystal but I remember the rough trail past Chihuahua, up over that ridge ahead, down through the part where you can see Cobalt Lakes below, and then back up to Crystal. It isn’t a trip for the weak-minded or weak-bodied.
What’s going on here?? I thought the difference in mileage between the lakes was 4/10 of a mile, not 2/10. Did Monarch get pushed farther out, or did Crystal get pulled closer? My memory says that Crystal is farther than just another 1.4 miles from this junction.
Trail Guy and I went toward Monarch briefly because I remembered seeing a tree along the trail a few years ago that I couldn’t identify. Turns out it is a foxtail pine, and I didn’t recognize it because it is sheltered from the harsh elements and has grown tall and straight instead of the gnarly warped shape I am used to seeing.
Same view, several hours later, at Groundhog Meadow. “Groundhog Meadow”, as opposed to Marmot Boulderfield.
This trail is hot, dusty and steep. Any time I am trudging back down it in the heat of the day, I question the wisdom of day hiking on this side of the valley.
A group of 14 very fit and fairly grumpy Sierra Clubbers passed me up. I might be grumpy too if I had a 6 hour drive back to a city.
Someone forgot their shoes. They might be my size. If not, I’ll send them to Provision International.
There are juried are shows, and there are judged art shows. Juried shows have a judge or a panel of judges who decide which entries are in and which are out. Judged shows award prizes.
I entered a juried show which is to hang for a year in a Tulare County government office building lobby. Any piece had to be a minimum of 2′ per side, so I rejuvenated 2 older pencil drawings and painted a new oil of my favorite bridge. (That’s the Oak Grove Bridge on the Mineral King Road.)
“The Oak Grove Bridge”, oil, IN.
“Before M&Ms. . .”, pencil and colored pencil, OUT.
“Little Cabin, Big Trees”, pencil, IN.
Go figure. I asked the coordinator of the show if he could tell me how the decision was made. It is good to know the reasons behind such decisions, because they help me learn for the future. He didn’t know, couldn’t tell me, and I continue in a state of befuddlement.
Normally I don’t enter juried shows, because they often have an entry fee and then are a hassle to deliver the work. This is in Visalia, the county seat of Tulare County, and since my mama lives there, delivering will be part of my normal route.
There will be an opening reception to the show on Thursday, September 19, and I cannot attend, so the mystery of why 2 are in and 1 is out will remain unsolved.
I am currently working on things that don’t belong on this blog. These things are often not in Mineral King, and since Mineral King is the most popular topic on the blog, I am showing you photos of recent hikes by my husband of almost 33 years, Trail Guy. Eventually I will be working on my art again and letting you have a peek into the life of this Central California artist.
Sky Pilot is only found in very high elevations, almost always near Farewell Gap. This is the flower on the cover of “Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names” (but not this photo).
Lupine, not Sky Pilot.
Yeppers, snow remains in August. . .
. . .but it is melting.
Thank you, Trail Guy, for photographing wildflowers and hopefully whetting the appetite of the readers for a book that tells the common names of Mineral King wildflowers!
100 page paperback, flowers in photos, common names only, lots of chatty commentary, $20 including tax. Available here Also available at the Three Rivers Historical Museum, Silver City Store, from me if I put them in my car, or Amazon.
Hey Central California Artist who hikes, what are you doing these days? Not working, not hiking.
Then what? I dunno. Knitting, reading, helping people, yardening, editing, planning for drawing lessons in September, thinking about painting ideas, messing with the calendar design.
Some of that IS work! Yeah, but I like it all.
Why aren’t you hiking? Because helping people and anything involving the computer happens down the hill.
Okay, then let’s look at pictures that Trail Guy took on a recent hike. Okay, good idea. He went to White Chief again.
Penstemon is a family of wildflowers that have tubes, which hummingbirds like.
How’s that for a non-scientific explanation?
There are many types of penstemon, and I know the names of some of them. Others are confusing, so if you are really into this, maybe you can discover the names. And remember, I only deal in common names (but sometimes read the Latin ones and have learned that Genus comes first and Species comes second, but I don’t know what those things actually mean.)
Pride of the Mountains, or Mountain Pride is a hot pink version.
The red one is called Golden Beard Penstemon, because if you look inside its mouth, it is yellow. (But why would it have a beard inside its mouth? Yuck.) I didn’t lie on the ground and photograph up into the opening for you. And I don’t know where I got the name “Golden Beard”, because in my book it is called Red, Scarlet, or Bridge’s Penstemon.
This next one might be called Showy Penstemon, but I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that the color slays me. It grows close to the ground and is hard to photograph well.
The fourth type I’ve only seen on Farewell Gap. It is a pinky-purple, or perhaps a purply-pink. It is called both Timberline and Davidson’s Penstemon.
That’s the strap to my camera on the upper right, in case you are wondering.
Finally, there is one I learned as Whorled Penstemon, but all the books I consulted call it Meadow, Sierra, or Small-Flowered Penstemon. There is always a lot of it at White Chief, and I saw some at Eagle Lake last summer. It is another one that I have not photographed particularly well. It is lavender but for some reason usually shows up sort of pinkish.
And thus we conclude our non-scientific tangent into the wonders of Penstemon.
100 page paperback, flowers in photos, common names only, lots of chatty commentary, $20 including tax. Available here Also available at the Three Rivers Historical Museum, Silver City Store, from me if I put them in my car, or Amazon.
The junction of the Franklin Lakes and Farewell Gap trail is notorious for abundant wildflowers. I left the area reluctantly, as Trail Guy became Off-Trail Guy while I headed back to the cabin.
These folks passed me by, but when I caught up to them, I knew several. It was a group from Westmont College in Santa Barbara. Great folks!
The Pennyroyal were both thick and fragrant, especially if you knelt in them for a photo, as I did.
I keep looking for the best photo of wildflowers in the foreground with landmarks in the background. Timber Gap is the landmark area in this photo.
Timber Gap and Lupine, very similar to a photo taken by Trail Guy shown in yesterday’s post. (We’ve been married for almost 33 years, so things like this are bound to happen.)
Larkspur is one of my favorites. (My real favorite, Explorer’s Gentian, was just beginning to bloom but I only greeted it, taking no photos.)
Franklin Creek. I managed to cross without accidentally sitting down this time.
Trail Guy and I parted ways at the junction. He wanted to go off-trail, and Prudence told me to stick to the trail. (I do best when I listen to her.) These are his photos from across the East Fork of the Kaweah, on the north-facing slopes of Farewell Canyon.
That’s not a wildflower!
Tomorrow I’ll show you photos of my hike the 4 miles back to Mineral King, on the trail.
Trail Guy and I wanted to continue enjoying wildflowers at their peak, so we headed to the Franklin/Farewell Gap junction, 4 miles from the Mineral King Valley floor.
Morning sun coming through the Bigelow Sneezeweed.
Morning sun coming through thistle at the Crystal Creek crossing.
PINK Lupine?? Yeppers.
Last week this Giant Blazing Star was just unopened buds.
How many photos of Lupine will I take? As many as I want!
At the junction. The flowers are better behind me than in front.
Trail Guy went up ahead to a spring with reliable water. Yeppers, we drink from springs. Not saying that you should, just that we do.
Pink Sierra Bluebells. Life is full of unanswerable questions.
Yikes. Look what is coming down the trail. Better get a move on!
I mentioned a friend in a recent post, someone I have mostly known through email correspondence. Last week she showed me a trail I have never heard of, and it seems to me that it might be very localized secret. So, out of respect for people’s privacy, I will simply show you photos but keep the identifying information quiet.
Wooly Mullein is not a native but grows along the Mineral King Road above the ranger station. I saw this on the way to meet my friend.
This is new to me – soft and furry like Lamb’s Ears (the plant, not an actual animal’s ears).
Our view.
Another unknown yellow.
An unknown little pink.
This is my first look at a Lewis Monkeyflower AND IT IS BLURRY!!
On the way back up the Nature Trail, I stopped to admire the aspens (and rest a little.)
Felwort is in bloom. I first saw this with another cabin neighbor/friend 2 years ago. It was A Moment To Remember. In real life it has more intense color, so much more that the first time I saw it, I thought it was lupine.
