On day 2 in Mineral King, S’s younger daughter woke up very excited to go fishing with Michael. She is highly competitive and it is reported that the first words from her mouth that a.m. were “I’m going to smoke that old man!”
“That old man” had to get his fly rod ready for the challenge. (He wasn’t worried.)
The girls used live crickets (gross!) and worms (also gross!)
“That old man” smoked the girls!
If you have been a follower of this blog for 2 years, you may have read of my good friend S. (Did some painting in her dining room, and called her when I had a huge rattler that I was too weenie to deal with). We made arrangements for S and her 2 daughters to spend a few days with us in Mineral King. (Don’t worry about Mr. S – he was fishing in Alaska!) Wow, I sometimes forget how fun it is to see a newcomer’s excitement! S has been up before, but her daughters were in a state of high enthusiasm for the place. We first visited a waterfall that has a mining tunnel at the base:
The maps call it “Black Wolf” – we call it “Monarch”. Unless you have followed the somewhat sketchy trail to its base, you probably won’t recognize it from this angle.
It was creepy, slimy, dark, wet and cold in the tunnel. Doesn’t that sound inviting? 😎
Saw a wild rose, which isn’t all that common in Mineral King!
We barbecued pizza for dinner and enjoyed it around a warming fire. It is so shocking to want a fire when it is 100+ degrees down the hill!
There is a flower that blooms in profusion in Mineral King. It has been incorrectly called “mule ears”, “arnica” and “sneezeweed”. I know all those, and this isn’t them. It appears to be in the sunflower family and always looks scraggly, even when first in bloom.
I tend to think of it as “oh, that yellow thing”. But look at That Yellow Thing in a group:
This is the before and after of today’s painting session:
Doesn’t look as if there is a great deal of real estate to be covered here. Looks can fool you! Because each photo was taken from a different vantage point, I keep getting confused as to which level of rocks, individual rocks, trees and shrubs are coming from which photo!
My back sort of hurts from shoving that boulder over. It is a weird shape now, but my photo has it cut off. I’ll work on a more believable redesign tomorrow, along with finishing all that white space and getting the trail to turn to the left.
This week I met several mural team members at The Wall to discuss our options in dealing with our mechanical snags. We formulated a plan, and after they do what they have to do, I’ll be back on the wall. While at the wall, I did a bit of sketching  because I was there and the only thing worse than getting up at 5 a.m. is wasting it! It is a little risky, because my historical consultants and I aren’t entirely convinced that this is the original Mt. Whitney Power Co. cabin. It appears as such on the Mineral King Preservation Society website. The question is that it also looks like the type of cabin built by Windy Stevens, about whom I do not have adequate information. . . perhaps he wasn’t around when the Mt. Whitney Power Co. was. Perhaps the MWPC used his plans. More will be revealed (if I am diligent AND lucky!)
 
First I painted it in green. It was wrong, so I repainted it in brown. (Hard to tell the difference in color here!)
After a very productive week in the studio, I returned to the wall today and was greeted by this sight:
 
This is Channel 26’s Great Day camera man and reporter Clayton Clark.
 
Clayton did a fake-out while I was unloading my supplies.
He wore a little thingie in his ear so the folks back in the Fresno studio could communicate with him. He did a little “teaser” every so often, and then interviewed someone every 15 minutes.
Here they are with Randy Groom, the new Exeter City Manager.
Clayton did some actual painting and enjoyed it enough that he painted when the camera wasn’t even on him. Made me feel like Tom Sawyer. 😎
I let him add his name to the helper signature section. While there, I found a message from Marilyn and the Uganda ladies! Made my day!
These folks saw us on teevee and stopped by to help.
This was definitely the most social and least productive day yet!
Mineral King Morning, 11×14″, oil on wrapped canvas, $175
A picture is worth a thousand words – here are 11,000 words for you to enjoy. Click on them to see them larger.
This is as far as we went; still much snow remains
The next day we went to Empire. This is an old road built by the miners and it is a great relief to find it after scrambling up a long steep slope.
Went high enough to see down into White Chief.
 
My goal was this nubbin at 10,500′. Michael went 200 feet higher, but my good sense (and lack of depth perception) caused me to wait. Waiting is seldom a problem for me.
We love this section of trail leading to Timber Gap (which you can see still has patches of snow). The phlox and blue lips were outstanding!
Because it was the Fourth of July, I looked until I found a patch of red, white and blue!
