Getting Outside in the Sunshine of Three Rivers

Trail Guy and I took a walk with some friends. It really was just a walk, but two of us carried lunch and water for the other two. It involved some trespassing, so the location will be kept quiet, other than Three Rivers. Of course, if you live here, you will probably recognize where we were. Shhhh. . . .

It started clear, and there were a few trees in bright fall colors. This is looking downstream from the Dinely bridge over the middle fork of the Kaweah River.

From our perch, spots of bright colored trees appeared. These are primarily Chinese pistache, a hardy tree that plants itself in random places, secret spots that no one notices until early November. 

But ick, what happened to the clear day??

The elephant was visible with the new snow on Alta Peak.

Baby rattler or gopher snake? Only its tongue was moving. Trail Guy relocated it a bit using a stick, and it was really stiff. One of our friends may have screamed a little bit. Trail Guy said it most likely was a gopher snake, because they are a bit shinier than rattlers.

One last look through the smog. Haze. Smoke. something.

Three Rivers is one of the best places to live in Tulare County. I’ve lived in the country outside of Ivanhoe, in Visalia, and in Lemon Cove (which is a close second to Three Rivers if you don’t mind being in a town of 190 people). It is the closest place to Mineral King where one can live year around, and it’s where my home is, complete with 3 cats.

That is Tucker, Jackson, and Little Bucky, who is not a cat. Pippin was probably sleeping in the house, where he is NOT allowed, but Trail Guy has a real soft spot for Mr. Orange Bob Square Pants.

Calendars Available, Mineral King HIKES

2023, Mineral King HIKES, still available here: Calendars

I’d show you the back of the calendar, but out of respect for my Most Faithful Blog Commenter you will need to click on the link to see it. Sharon buys a calendar every year, and never allows herself to see what it is in it until the appropriate month arrives.

 

Day Two of First Road Trip Since the Plague

If you can’t see the photos, go here: cabinart.net/blog. Does anyone else find it hard to sleep in a motel? I was dying to open the window, but it opened onto a walkway where other occupants passed by, and who knows it someone would crawl in?? So, that, along with the road buzz, made sleeping a bit of a challenge after my 500 mile driving day. “Road buzz” is my description of that inner vibration from being so alert for all those hours. Even my long walk around Weed didn’t completely obliterate the inner hum.

So, I was back on the road by 5:15 AM.

Holy guacamole, Oregon is so very beautiful. Even though the hills are becoming golden, the dried out look is offset by all the greenery surrounding it. Maybe it seemed extra beautiful because it wasn’t hot.

Upon arrival, my people had an appointment in downtown Salem, the capitol of Oregon. So, I went along but took a walk, in search of the capitol building. There were so many pretty parks, and beautiful old homes. No photos of the homes, because I was on a quest.

The talking lady on my phone sent me around in circles, telling me for about 3/4 of a mile, “go one quarter mile and turn right”. That right turn never arrived, so finally I shut her off and just followed my instincts. 

Instincts? This was based on a vague hand wave indicating “it’s that way”, and eventually, seeing the tip of a gold idol way above the other buildings.

Idol? A statue in gold reminds me of things mentioned in the Old Testament. It also reminded me of all those Moroni angel statues on top of Mormon temples in Utah. I’m not sure who Oregon has commemorated on their capitol.

Turns out that I walked 3-1/2 miles in the middle of an August afternoon. What a thrill to be somewhere that doesn’t cause one to just cower inside the air-conditioning! (I’m sure they do plenty of cowering indoors during the winter, because everything is a trade-off of some sort.)

Look at the scenery on the drive back. I was a passenger, so the photos aren’t quite as wonky as the ones from when  I was driving.

What a beautiful state!

The next few days will be spent in family activities, probably not photoworthy, so tomorrow (Friday) we will return to a Mineral King post. 

Next week? More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

 

First Road Trip After the Plague

If you can’t see the photos, go here: cabinart.net/blog. We interrupt our regular broadcasting schedule to bring you a special report. After only leaving Tulare County 5 times in 2 years*, I drove 500 miles one day this week.

I headed straight out Highway 198 to Interstate Five, also known as “The Five” (not to be confused with a group of talking heads). For about the first 100 miles, I drove in silence. Then I tried talk radio, bouncing to music and back to talk. At about 250 miles, I put in a book on CD, Condoleeza Rice’s autobiography, read beautifully by her. Thinking I’d need more breaks, I was surprised to only stop twice for gas and once for coffee.

One of my favorite sights on that long highway is Truck Village. (My photos are better when I am a passenger than when driving.)

Suddenly, I was in Weed, my first night’s destination. This is a seedy town, dominated by Mt. Shasta, capturing traffic off The Five in addition to capitalizing on its unfortunate name (named after Mr. Abner Weed, who most likely is turning over in his grave).

The Hi-Lo Cafe has good food but a bit of trouble with spelling.

Resisting the urge to correct the sign, I took a walk around town. The elevation is about 3400′ and it was a very clear and comfortable evening to hop aboard the Zapato Express** after sitting all day long.

I went under the welcome arch (the cafe’s menu said it was built in the ’20s and then rebuilt in the ’60s), heading to downtown. There is definitely an artsy vibe, discovered several places but only photographed here on these decorated steps. Looks just like something I would do.  (Ahem. Something I may have done. Trail Guy is very tolerant of my little eccentric experiments.)

Weed has one rather worn-out looking mural. Sorry to break it to you, Weed, but a mural cannot save a village.

The town is dominated by Shasta.

Such a sad downtown. Many dispensaries, a thrift shop, a tattoo parlor, a couple of bars, a big antique mall, some souvenir places taking advantage of that unfortunate town name, a closed movie theater, a closed bowling alley, many other abandoned buildings, and some attempts to spruce things up by having nice sidewalks, a nice city hall, a couple of tiny parks. The homes I passed were full of potential for cuteness, but what would bring someone to this place besides the geography? 

Bye-bye, Weed. Maybe I’ll see you on the way back home.

*Once to Kern County, 4 times to Fresno County

**Take a walk

Hume Lake Instead of Mineral King

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Every summer for the past handful of years, I have had the privilege of joining a friend from childhood at her Hume Lake cabin. She brings 2 other friends with her, and now they are part of the fun that I look forward to each summer. This is a different part of the Sierra than our other home in Mineral King, and it is more than just a geographical difference: the cultural differences are stark. This is not a good/bad situation; it is simply a different situation. 

We walk around the lake (3 miles on a well-used trail), rent a water something (rowboat, stand-up paddle board, kayak, canoe), walk among the fancy mountain houses (I can’t really think of these beautiful homes as “cabins”, part of the stark contrast to Mineral King), hear excellent speakers (a Christian camp with good chapel services), reunite with my friend’s cousins (now my friends too), eat too much, laugh until I fall down, talk late into the night, and sleep too little.

The journey this year had this dismal landscape for part of the trip.

The lake and all of Hume escaped last year’s conflagration.

On Saturday evenings after the campers have left, some of the staff race to the end of the dock and fling themselves into the lake. It looks different at different times of day, always picturesque. The dam which creates the lake is highly unusual. It was built in 1908, and the lake was created for transporting logs. My favorite part of the trail is below the dam where it is green green green. Or wait—is my favorite part of the trail where the wild iris bloom?

Or maybe it is at the beginning of the trail. I like the view from the bridge that crosses Ten Mile Creek. We like to walk to the top of the hill, and were blown away by the potential lumber. These folks believe in mechanical thinning, in managing their forest. Could this be why they have escaped the wildfires through the years? The view from Inspiration Point was somewhat obstructed by clouds this year.  And finally, this year our visit coincided with the elusive and magical red mariposa lily! (My friends may have been concerned for my mental balance when I insisted that we look for it, amazed that I spotted it, and puzzled by my enthusiasm, but one of them took this photo for me.)

Poppy Peeping

The poppies and other wildflowers were at at their peak on March 11. Three friends and I took the afternoon off to go fill our eyes.

First, we had to empty our wallets to fill the gas tank. Welcome to Three Rivers.

Then we headed down around the lake, and up Dry Creek Road, all within eastern Tulare County.

This last photo shows Terminus Dam in the distance, which creates Kaweah Lake. The flowers weren’t fabulous right there at the Dry Creek Preserve, but it was clear and green, which is pretty fabulous on its own. 

We never did get out amidst the flowers but stayed on the shoulder of the road, and actually did no trespassing whatsoever.

I must be finally growing up.

A Birthday Walk

On Trail Guy’s birthday, we went to Hospital Rock in Sequoia National Park, which is as far as people are allowed to go right now. It has been about 2-1/2 weeks since the last storm, but the road isn’t cleared because the equipment is broken and there aren’t enough operators or mechanics. At least that’s what they say. When Trail Guy was Road Guy, there were no excuses—the road was kept open, no matter what. Period. No time-off. Sigh.

Fretting over the present is not why we are here today. We are here because there are sights to see, such as this ugly burned area.

Moro Rock as seen from Hospital Rock; steps go up the side you cannot see from here. Advertisement: I have a pencil drawing of this, available as a reproduction. Might even still have the original buried deep in a file.

This elderberry shrub survived the fire.

Castle Rocks: if you look across the middle fork of the Kaweah River from atop Moro Rock, you will see these distinctive rocks. Or you can skip the climb and take the Moro Creek Road to see them, as we did, especially when the Park is mostly unavailable. 

California bay laurel trees make bay leaves, the kind used in cooking.

We walked up the Moro Creek Road, which takes you to the Middle Fork Trailhead.

I love me some green.

That footbridge down there is called the Buckeye bridge because you get to it through the Buckeye campground. A long time ago, Trail Guy was part of the crew who rebuilt the bridge. A big flood took it out the following winter and it had to be rebuilt yet again. (He wasn’t part of that rebuild.)

Alta Peak’s elephant is at a more oblique angle than the way we see it from Three Rivers.

The green arrow points toward Alta Peak; the blue oval is around Triple Divide Peak (separating 3 drainages: Kings to the left/north, Kaweah to the west/toward us, Kern to the right/south); the red oval is around Mt. Stewart.

Heading back, looking down toward the valley.

In addition to loving green, I love me a good stone wall.

And thus we conclude our birthday walk of 3.3 miles in the foothills of Sequoia National Park, just above the little town of Three Rivers, in Tulare County, California’s flyover country.

Sincerely,

Your Central California artist who takes walks instead of painting or drawing these days but plans on getting back to work eventually.

 

A Walk With a Mission

Why am I showing you this? Because I am not working on any art projects at the moment. (Pictures of two book editing projects wouldn’t hold your interest—you’re welcome.)

Further, I won’t be revealing the location of this walk, because we were trespassing. Forgive us our trespasses. . .

I was on a mission. The last time we took this walk, I spied a classic cabin—stone chimney, board and batten siding, very simple.

Who cares? Your Central California artist.

Why? My business is called “Cabin Art”. And I have been walking in this neighborhood for 23 years, so it is quite thrilling (and puzzling) to see something for the first time, something clearly old that has escaped my notice.

I talked to a couple of people who know the area and received a couple of possible explanations for this intriguing structure. It is down there somewhere. (Trail Guy brought binoculars).

THERE! See it? It is so far down a driveway that it is not at all visible from the road that I walk.

Mystery solved. After that, we had a shouted conversation with our friends on a lower section of road.

Alta Peak was crispy clear.

There it is again! Why haven’t those people asked me to draw it? Don’t they know who I am??

It might make a nice painting, if I include the backdrop. I’ve heard the people are quite reclusive, but the strangest coincidences regularly occur when I am curious about a building. I learned the names of the owner, and next week, someone by the same name who I know is related started drawing lessons. More will be revealed. . . or not.Looking down canyon, you can see the air quality deteriorates. But oh my, the GREEN!

This is not the river. Just sayin’. (That is a handy little cliché).

A POPPY ON JANUARY 9!! Excuse me for shouting. This is Very Very Early. But wait! There’s more!

BUSH LUPINE TOO! Guess I was too excited to focus the camera, not that one has the option on a PHD* type of camera.

*Press Here, Dummy

Exploring the End of North Fork Drive

Trail Guy, The Farmer, Hiking Buddy and I went on a bit of an adventure. We had all been here are various times in our lives, but never after a fire. The upper end of North Fork Drive had borate (pink fire retardant) sprayed on both sides of the road, the views were much wider than before with so much brush burned out, and it was much more apparent than before how very steep the drop-off is to the river.

After a tail-gate lunch, we headed across the creek and up a dirt road to see how things looked.

This road was widened by bulldozers to create a firebreak. The area definitely burned, but the October rains and the north-facing slopes together have allowed green to begin emerging.

Hey -what is that?

Just a couple of little underground rooms, one with a solid concrete door.

Look – we crossed a bridge to peek into the little rooms – I didn’t notice at the time.

This road is just going up and up and up and up. . . nothing looks different. Let’s go back and take the fork to the right. But what is this white stuff? Ash. A tree on the ground burned and we are looking at the branching pattern left behind.

This was probably covered in a variety of shrubs. I am loving the green here. We headed over to a big flat area, known as Grunigen’s Flat, a former homestead or cattle ranch or commune or something.

Because it all burned, this impressive rock wall shows up.

We followed the wall, which followed the creek. All this chiseled quarried stone, laid without mortar, for what end?

Ugh. Fire. I kept expecting to come to a granite slab with Indian grind-holes. Sure enough, we did, but I didn’t photograph it. I was too absorbed in the sycamores, stone wall, and the green.

The ground was weird like this all over – is this some sort of fire-heave effect?? I don’t think it was a gopher evacuation camp.

The Farmer did a bit of searching and learned that the wall was built in the ’30s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, specifically the Yucca CCC Camp. Not sure what purpose it served other than providing work. If I didn’t have other things going on, I might look it up. But sometimes, a wall is just a wall, and a stone wall this aesthetically pleasing is good enough for this Central California artist for now.

Mineral King and Somewhere Else

Fridays may be for Mineral King around here, but my last trip to the mountains was somewhere else. However, Trail Guy took a trip up to a spot above Timber Gap to have lunch with our friend Ted. He isn’t there, but some of his ashes might be. They enjoyed this view. ( I don’t know the laws about ashes, and I didn’t participate, so let’s say that they are allegedly in that location.)

A dear friend asked if I have painted this view. Sometimes, nay, often, it is brighter than this. No, I haven’t painted it. It doesn’t strike me as something that people care enough about. However, if you are interested, I can paint it for you, because I paint things and places that people love for prices that won’t scare them.

This is where I was on my last trip to the Sierra Nevada (mistakenly called “the sierras” – to use the familiar correctly, please say “The Sierra” – my dad taught me this, so I know it is correct.)

Hume Lake is a much different experience than Mineral King. Fancy road, comparatively fancy cabin (electricity, and even a microwave, and now the internet too), many many people, many cabins (most quite fancy), lots of flat miles to cover around and around the lake, various boats to rent (the canoe leaked, I returned to the boat house and found another one, which also leaked but more slowly), church services (both indoors and out), and much commerce. It was a retreat for me with 3 outstanding women from the Sacramento area, now a strong tradition for our little group.

The flowers are a little different because the elevation is lower. There are good wild iris, which surprises me each year. I’ve only found one in Mineral King, and I am not telling the location. You can also see them on the lower 5 miles of the road in early May, in the north facing wet drainages. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. 

Searching for a Bridge

Three Rivers has one river, the Kaweah, pronounced “kuh-WEE-uh”. Four forks come together into the Middle Fork, but apparently only three mattered when it was time to name the town. (No, I don’t know which three.) Middle, Marble, East, South, and North are the names of the various branches.

A week or two ago, I learned that the brother of two of my former drawing students took on something called a “bridge project”. He was commissioned to create four 2×2′ tile mosaics to decorate a new bridge somewhere in the county. I asked around and concluded it must be the bailey bridge at the upper end of South Fork Road. So, Trail Guy and I went exploring.

You can see evidence of the SQF Complex fire that burned a lot of South Fork, threatened Three Rivers, Case Mt. and Mineral King

Here is the bridge, going in just upstream of the old bailey bridge, and still just one lane wide:

You can watch Nate Norman talk about making these tiles on this YouTube video. (You might want to fast forward past the first few minutes of someone talking about Arts Consortium business and get right to Nate’s presentation.)

I did a screen shot from the video to show you one of his truly beautiful mosaics. As someone who has experimented with tile mosaic in the past, I can assure you that this was no small undertaking.

We drove up near the bridge, but it was being worked on so I just took a couple of photos. I am guessing the tiles will go on each of 4 main pillars, one of which I have circled the spot in red for you.

The bridge is about 11 miles up South Fork Road, and I think the campground is one mile farther. We didn’t cross the bridge, but headed back down. It was such a beautiful day that I almost forgot about August. And heat. And smoke. And smog.

There were poppies, but they were closed up due to the overcast day. However, I did get this poor photo of a few wildflowers by kneeling in the mud on the side of the road.

You are welcome.

I do what I can to find the beauty in Tulare County, but not so much that people will flock here. Remember, we are uneducated, poor, unemployed, fat, and diabetic. Oh, and there is that bad air filtering down through the Altamont Pass from the Bay Area for which we get penalized. Further, there is no Trader Joe’s and never will be.

Just keeping it real.

Fake Tucker and keeping it real Tucker