The first time I drew a Hume Lake cabin, it was for my friend’s parents. Her mom commissioned a pencil drawing.
Wait, not true. The first time I drew a Hume Lake cabin, it was the boys staff cabin across the street from the girls staff cabin, in 1978. It was a present for my roommate, and I didn’t save a picture of the drawing.
Here is my friend’s cabin the first time I drew it (1995), and again after my friend allowed me to improve it (2017).
A few things have changed over the years, but none significantly alter the look. (Two trees in the foreground are history and now the room is metal.)
My friend’s cousins have become my friends too, and one year we were there for a birthday party for three of the cousins. I did three tiny paintings for birthday gifts.
My friend commissioned me to paint some ornaments for some of her cousins. They look awful here—wet, shiny, perhaps even incomplete.
One of the cousins sent me this photo the next year.
My most recent iteration of Hume Lake is in pencil, used in the 2026 calendar. This is the view from the footbridge over Ten Mile Creek, looking toward the Forest Service beach called Sandy Cove. (It doesn’t show—it’s behind the trees on the right.)
I have so many beautiful photos of the lake. . . I could paint it. Maybe I will someday. I know, “someday is not a day”, and “sometime is not on the schedule.”
Each summer starting in 2017, I’ve spent time with a dear friend at her Hume Lake cabin. Most years we gather in June, last year in July, and this year in August. It was HOT, REALLY HOT, so we didn’t rent any watercraft or walk around the lake. Mostly we just hung out in and around the cabin.
We strolled along the lake, hoping to find a place to wade in. However, the level was lower than usual, and wading meant mushing through mud, so we passed on that option.
The Rest of a Story
If you live in the Central Valley, you may have heard that a Hume Lake cabin burned in a storm last February. It was one of the boys dorm-like cabins, which caught fire when a tree fell on some wires. It has been temporarily replaced with a couple of huge tents, WITH A/C IN THEM!! Camp has certainly changed since I was a happy camper. (We only viewed the tents from a distance.)
I got up one morning and followed the road to the bridge over Ten-Mile Creek, the main feeder into the lake. The lake is so still in the morning.
There are Forest Service cabins along that stretch, and of course I speculated about knocking on doors and leaving notes with a business card and price list on each one. Maybe next year. . . but prolly not.
I was very heartened to see that the Forest Service is doing a lot of mechanical thinning. Forest management is the way to stop many of those devastating wildfires.
In case you were wondering where some of the things are, or how far away, this sign might be helpful. This is the way I usually leave Hume rather than driving through Grant Grove and past Wilsonia. Then I drive the Generals Highway through Sequoia, straight home without having to drop down into the valley.
This is looking up Ten Mile Creek from the driving bridge.
Ten Mile Creek, as viewed from the footbridge on the trail, which is downstream from the road.
This is the view I used in my 2026 calendar for June. It looks different this year.
Meanwhile, back at the cabin, my friends were fixing to take a walk later that morning, hopefully before it got too hot. Nothing too strenuous, just exploring a bit through the cabins. These things caught my attention.
We went to The Tree House, something I’ve heard about for years but never seen. WOW!! This is in Wagon Train, which is the little kids’ camp. The big groups are finished for the summer now that school starts so early for most students, so we were free to poke around.
It is made partially from old barrels, so the sides are convex and things are purposely curved. It is reached by a very slick suspension bridge and has many levels. It is utterly charming, kind of Disneyesque.
Then of course we meandered through the wagons, and I was astonished to see how many have been added since we last had the opportunity to go exploring. It was in 2020 when the camps weren’t operating.
We did a little bushwacking, a bit of crosscountry meandering and ended up at another suspension bridge, this one leading to a fort on an island in a very sluggish green muddy stream.
There was a lot of time just lollygagging around the cabin, catching up with one another, knitting, and talking talking talking talking talking…. I love these friends, the cabin owner’s cousins, a certain neighbor, the whole thing.
Let’s wrap it up with some lake shots, and then I’ll shut up about Hume Lake for another year.
On my last trip up the hill, my back hurt. I don’t know why. It just does sometimes, and after a week, it subsides. I never know if it is good for it to get taken for a walk or if I should just lie on the floor on ice.
I decided to ignore the thing and go hiking after taking an aspirin. With my friend K and Trail Guy, we headed up toward Eagle Meadow. I was anticipating some great flowers.
It was kind of hot, and steeper than it used to be. Each time I stopped, I got light-headed. Is this because I am 66? Fat? Pre-diabetic? Neuropathy in my feet? Whatever, I didn’t like it.
Trail Guy went on ahead while K and I stood there waiting for the blood to return to my head. I realized that I was seeing spots. They looked like purple flowers, but they were blurry and kept moving. Oh-oh.
I told K that I was going to listen to my body and head back to the cabin once the spots subsided. She said she’d come with me because she didn’t want to find me lying on the trail later. I said, “Don’t worry—someone else will get there first. Besides, you need to let Trail Guy know that I’m going back.”
She agreed, and we parted ways. I took a handful of crummy photos for you.
That’s Crystal Creek running down in an almost invisible ribbon across the canyon.
You can see Empire in the distance, and I think there were a few purple flowers in the foreground. Hmmm, maybe I was hallucinating.
SEE?? There WERE some purple flowers. So there.
These folks passed me. An umbrella on the trail? Yeppers. That’s the second one I’ve encountered this year.
Mr. Umbrella was a very interesting man. I caught up to them and we walked the last mile down together. He is a caver (probably not the correct title), someone who protects caves around the state (maybe even the country—I didn’t ask), gives tours, and does much more, including cave rescues. I learned that if a person wants to explore a cave, he should look up his “local grotto” (I don’t know if that is an organization called “Local Grotto” or if it is called “Grotto”) and find the local branch. Each cave has trustees, and a trustee will help you explore the cave, assuming you have the proper climbing gear and experience.
I was fine when I got home, and by the time you are reading this, my back is probably also fine. I don’t understand the extreme low blood pressure, or the spots, or why the trail is steeper this year.
Can someone please stop the clock and the calendar for me?
Here, let’s have a few not crummy photos from the next day when I walked down the road.
Then I saw this car. Not a Honda, but Toyota is fine too. Our two pick-‘em-up trucks are Toyotas. The car has no model on it. Look at the color! I peeked in the window and it is a stick shift. I almost put a card under the windshield saying “Please call me if you want to sell this car”. Of course I want to know the model, the year, the mileage, but oh my, it looked like my dream car, a younger Fernando in Toyota instead of Honda.
Momscar is a fine piece of transportation, but I NEED this car!
Oh grow up, Central California Artist, you are 66, not 16.
The idea was to hike somewhere during my most recent stay in Mineral King, but instead, I just hung out at the cabin with a few forays out to attempt to photograph a few wildflowers. I also ventured out to photograph a cabin to draw, but in case the cabin owner is one of my tens of readers, I won’t be sharing that info. It’s ‘posed to be a surprise. So, this post is another glimpse into cabin life.
We looked inside the Honeymoon Cabin, which is a mini museum for the Mineral King Preservation Society. It is tiny, but the phone-camera makes the room look spacious. I’m guessing it is about 10×12’.
I’ve been confused by the name of a flower: rein orchis? rein orchid? It depends on which wildflower book you are reading. I found this in a very old wildflower book.
We had to check on a friend’s cabin because he couldn’t get there and needed to learn about a potential propane leak. While Trail Guy poked around, I did too.
A great deal of knitting took place, which was good, because last week I learned that the sweater I’m making for a friend was too small, so three weeks of knitting hit the frog pond*. (If you are a knitter, you may be aware of the sad fact that swatches lie.)
Hey Reader Kathy W., this photo of Sawtooth is for you.
It took many attempts to get these photos because I can’t seem to figure out how to force my iPhone 14 to focus on what I choose. It has a mind of its own. Yes, I have tapped on the thing I want focused, but it just sits there obstinately blurry, waiting for me to press the shutter.
This was along the road.
It was mostly uneventful—I vacuumed the cabin, swatted biting flies, did some sketching for the commission, scratched fly bites, visited with many cabin neighbors, sprayed more insect repellent just in case it might discourage the flies, split a little wood, scratched more, and finished reading two books: Mostly What God Does by Savannah Guthrie, and Communion: Finding my Way Back to Faith by J.D. Vance. Both of those deserve 5 stars.
And thus we conclude another report on cabin life in Mineral King.
This could be cabin life anywhere, especially if your cabin is part of a community of cabins.
We often take walks to the bridge in the evening to enjoy the views, the light and one another’s company. My guess is that many cabin communities have gathering places and times in their own areas.
Sometimes we hike with neighbors and friends. Hiking is a main focus of Mineral King; not all cabin communities that I’ve visited have the kind of trails we have. Probably nowhere else has trails like Mineral King!
We talk to people who are wondering about trails, pointing out good places to go. The Park employees are often new and don’t have the depth of knowledge of the area that the locals do.
On Independence Day, we raised a flag together (and I read part of the Declaration of Independence to my hiking friends while at the Wildflower Cafe.) Flying a flag is a tradition when one’s cabin is occupied. There are a couple of cabins that don’t bother, and there are a couple that fly a California flag rather than the Stars and Stripes. (WHY??)
We share dinners, happy hours, extra bacon, kindling, marmot wisdom, and knitting knowledge. (There’s more, but I probably already have over-shared.)
Here is the classic view from the bridge of the Crowley Family cabin and Farewell Gap.
Behind and around our cabin is what firefighters call a “jackpot”. This is a conglomerate, a tangle, a giant mess of downed trees and limbs. Let’s not think too hard about their nomenclature.
I’ve been raking, dragging, cutting and organizing this in incremental sessions throughout the past 2 years. It is gradually decreasing, gradually getting cleaned up. Of course Trail Guy also works on this, approaching it a bit differently than me.
A handsaw rather than a chainsaw gives me a lot of upper-body exercise and makes some firewood to share with neighbors. My pace is laughable to Trail Guy, but I consider myself to be a rather productive tortoise.
Then I thought about swinging an axe to bust through a pretty stout limb, something I have only done once before in my life (a Three Rivers neighbor’s tree blew down in a storm, blocking her driveway, and no one with a chainsaw was available so I bravely marched down to her house in the rain with my trusty axe and got it into pieces that we could drag away.)
This piece required a lot of whaling, slamming, swinging, and wondering if I would be able to git-‘er-dun. When I got it this far, I asked Trail Guy for some input, guessing he’d bust through in 10 swings. He swung 15 times (yes, I counted), handed the axe back and told me to use a sharper one instead.
So I swapped axes, and went after it again, this time busting through with a shout of victory. The sharper axe was more effective.
I’ve asked Trail Guy to teach me how to sharpen an axe this summer, (mis)quoting Abraham Lincoln about spending an hour sharpening an axe and an hour chopping wood instead of spending 2 hours chopping wood.
Thus we conclude another look at my quirky cabin life. Perhaps next time I will be able to persuade Trail Guy to fire up his chainsaw, but most likely he will be working on neighbors’ stoves/water heaters/toilets/faucets/refrigerators. There has been way too much of that so far this summer. I helped with a water heater, and took photos and measured for a stove and another water heater to be replaced… I’m good for more than just some axe-swingin’.
Walking in Mineral King (Not a hike because we didn’t take packs)
Instead of the now normal down-the-road-and-up-the-Nature-Trail walk, or the wussy turning around at Crystal Creek, we went past Crystal to Franklin Creek.
It was a little bit farther this year. Don’t you just hate that?
Looking backLooking ahead
The flowers were most totally excellent.
This was interesting to your wildflower obsessed Central Calif. artist: a purple bush lupine adjacent* to a seldom-seen pink bush lupine.
This is angelica, not to be confused with cow parsnip. Angelica has lacy leaves, sort of visible at the bottom of this photo.
Here is Franklin Creek/Franklin Falls. This is the stream that rose too high for my hiking pal K and I to cross last year in August. You can read about it here: An Exciting Mineral King Hike
Crossing Crystal Creek is way more my speed than dealing with the deeper, steeper, and faster Franklin Creek.
Oh man! I forgot again to put that dime in my pocket for understanding sizes of little flowers!
The Indian paintbrush were spectacular, particularly interspersed with the grayish green sage.
An Advertisement Because This is Supposed to be a Business Blog
This painting is sold, but I can paint it again for you.
*”Adjacent” is “everyone’s” new favorite word. Podcasters and bloggers love to attach it to other words, like this: “This blog about art is Mineral King adjacent”.
With my new-to-me iPhone 14 in hand, I walked down the Mineral King Road to Cold Springs Campground (STILL CLOSED—CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN OR SOMETHING!) and back up the Nature Trail. This is about 2-1/2 miles total.
Let’s look at the flowers I found along the road. I actually did this route on two consecutive days and was very surprised by how many flowers vanished and new ones appeared in just 24 hours.
From left to right: mariposa lily—a ruffled variety I’ve never seen before; angelica (not to be confused with cow parsnip because angelica has lacy leaves); buckthorn
This view at the top of Endurance Grade always grabs me. Endurance Hill. Coral Hill. Whatevs. It photographs much better with the phone than it ever did with the camera, as much as it pains me to admit.
Most people prefer the view of Sawtooth. Sawtooth isn’t my favorite, but I paint it over and over because most people like it—they haven’t been medivacked off it*.
I love penstemon, particularly this variety. The color just slays me. Maybe I should learn the actual variety name.
A little past the ranger station, we cross the neglected bridge into the closed (WHY?) Cold Springs Campground. (It’s kind of fun to flick off the flaking paint. No, I am NOT telling you to do that! Why would I tell you to do that? Do you think I’m immature or something?)
Here are some yellow flowers on the other side of the bridge: seepspring monkey flower and false lily of the valley.
At the upper end of the closed (WHY?) Cold Springs campground is where the trail begins. It used to have lots of interesting and helpful signs along the trail. The Park removed them all with the plan of upgrading them, but it has been about 10 years so I don’t think it is a priority. (The Park will say, “Hiring freezes! Understaffed!” to which I have many opinions which I will keep to myself in order to keep the tone of my blog elevated.)
At least the beginning of the trail has a nice sign.
This is a Jeffrey pine, which used to have a sign explaining how to tell the difference between Jeffrey and Ponderosa pines and inviting you to sniff the tree, because Jeffreys smell a tad like vanilla.
Aspens are thick along the trail.
Can you see the trail? It’s definitely overgrown. Last week we saw a trail crew guy and I asked if I could prune it for them. He actually said, “If you want to!”
Blog Reader and Top Commenter Sharon calls this “Iron Falls”.
I finally remembered to put a dime in my pocket so that you can see the scale of wildflowers. I didn’t take into account how: A. difficult it is to photograph the 2 side-by-side with only 2 hands; B. to keep my hideous thumbnail out of the photo (yea for cropping); C. to make the phone focus on the blossom instead of the leaves; D. to actually see the screen. Maybe you are supposed to tap the bloom on the screen, but already being shorthanded, this is beyond my capability.
The little footbridge got rebuilt last summer, or maybe the one before. It all runs together.
More Sawtooth
And just in case you are into Sawtooth (Hi, Kathy Wolfe!), here it is one more time, peeking around the ridge, before the phone battery died**.
OIL PAINTINGS OF SAWTOOTH
WAIT! THIS IS A BUSINESS WEBSITE! Here are some oil paintings of Sawtooth available this summer at the Silver City Store (unless they have sold already.)
Sawtooth #67, 8×10”, oil on wrapped canvas, $165
Sawtooth # 68, 6×6”, oil on wrapped canvas, $75
Sawtooth #69, 8×8”, oil on wrapped canvas, $145
*It was 50 years last week so you’d think I’d be over it. I am, but it still isn’t my favorite. So there.
**This is the biggest disadvantage of using a phone instead of a camera. I also bought a charger, but it only works when it feels like it. The frustrations of tech are endless.
The Crystal Creek crossing is about 1 mile from the parking lot at the end of the road in Mineral King. It is relatively flat and easy. We don’t even pretend that it is a hike and it barely passes for exercise. But recently I’ve been thinking that as one ages, one’s body produces and contains progressively more discomfort. Since to hike is to be uncomfortable, one becomes less inclined to add to the discomfort by forcing oneself out onto trails of great steepness and altitude gain. (I AM SICK RIGHT NIGH UNTO DEATH OF THIS STUPID PERIPHERAL NEUROPATHY!)
Ahem. Excuse me for shouting. Let’s take a nice little gentle walk to Crystal Creek.
First, we cross the bridge and admire the classic view of Farewell Gap and the Crowley Family cabin.
Then we head up the road on the left side of the creek which leads to the pack station. The road turns into a trail after the pack station, SO DON’T BRING YOUR DOG.
There were a ton of flowers, and I experimented with the iPhone 14 as a camera with mixed results. All but one of these are dandelions, which are a wildflower in MIneral King, but a weed in your yard. The other is one of many unknowns in my personal wildflower index.
The trail passes through the green tunnel.*
Hey, a non-yellow flower! I’ve always thought these are whorled penstemon, but many books are calling them “small flowered penstemon”. I think “whorled” has a specific botanical definition, but I’m ignorant of it.
Here is the wide and shallow Crystal Creek. (That is kind of like Facebook, but it might be much wider and even more shallow.)
The views back down the trail:
Yea! More colors!
This summer is showing promise of being a terrific one for wildflowers. Everything seems to be about 2 weeks earlier than normal.
Tomorrow: The Nature Trail
*Remember this painting? I feel compelled to show you because this blog is supposed to be a business venture. Yes, it is the yellow tunnel here. Thank you, Captain Obvious.
While I am advertising, this painting might still be for sale at the Silver City Store.
Timber Gap with Bigelow Sneezeweed, 8×8”, oil on wrapped canvas, $145
I misled you yesterday when saying we’d visit my short wussy walks in Mineral King. Instead today’s topic is Cabin Life: what in the world does one do in a place with no electricity, internet, or phones?
These are the photographical items on the agenda:
Enjoy the views.
2. Help people hold down their porches.
3. Go exploring for things not noticed before, like these 5 trees growing off one downed tree.
4. Split wood (I’m downright scary with an axe.)
5. Test out a new method to oil the cabin. Looks as if nothing happened here; should have taken an “After” picture.
6. Dig through books trying to identify wildflowers.
7. Clean up messes from dropped trees. This is a giant long project.
8. Examine plants that are growing, with cautious victory dances that some transplanting may have FINALLY taken hold.
9. Spy on kids climbing The Big Rock, thinking how cool it is that kids still know how to play without screens (and then discover that they were inventing a way to get a tablet to the top of the rock.)
Non-photographical activities
We also listen to a lot of country music and try to guess the singers, read, and I knit. Trail Guy naps when he isn’t fixing things at other people’s cabins. (“Hey Mike, could you look at my fridge/oven/toilet/faucet/shower/water heater?” This is endless.) We hang out with neighbors, help strangers figure out appropriate hikes or walks, visit with people that we can’t avoid, and sometimes we hide from all the social activities.
And of course, we hike and walk. Hiking is when you carry a pack with water and lunch; walking is when you don’t have to carry all that stuff (but you can if you want—I rarely do.)
