Mineral King August Tradition

The Mineral King Preservation Society has been hosting a concert for several (five? ten? I can’t remember) years. It happens on a platform that was initially built for dancing back in the days of the Mineral King resort. The musicians are a married couple who call themselves Mankin Creek. They are bluesy, folksy, terrific!

You can see the edge of the platform. On it, and around the edges too – might have had 100 people.

Dinner is provided – sandwiches from Sierra Subs, grapes from The Farmer (our hiking partner).

Farewell Gap had nice light.

I messed around with settings on my camera, found “super vivid”,  and decided it would look better painted this way.

But, this is how it looked with real alpenglow, not enhanced by the camera’s fancy settings. It is the best!

Some of the staff from the Silver City Resort were uninhibited about dancing and really added life to the evening. Afterward I talked to them (they sell my paintings for me!) and learned they are from: New Hampshire, New York, Nebraska, Michigan, San Diego, and Orange County. Uninhibited about dancing and undaunted by travel.

These events make me tired. I need to spend time just sitting and knitting to prepare and to recover. The color in real life is pretty close to “super vivid” light on Farewell Gap.

Taking a walk with a friend is also a good recovery activity from too much time in a crowd.

And look who we saw on the way down the hill after the weekend. Didn’t get his face – Trail Guy was driving and not too keen on sitting in the middle of the road while waiting for a good bear pose. My inability to get good animal photos is one of the reasons I stick to landscapes.

12 New Things I Learned in July

July was another month of learning odd facts, interesting tidbits, touching stories, and annoying experiences.

  1. A friend who knows odd facts said that the biggest danger while sailing across the Atlantic Ocean is running into cargo containers that have fallen off of ships. Eventually someone will figure out a way to locate those missing Seatrains and turn it into a teevee show.
  2. Got an answer about Iron Springs and Soda Springs from my friend Fort Worth Jim, a geologist: “The water has carbon dioxide in it which makes the water acidic. Acidic water can dissolve iron but when it flows out it loses its carbon dioxide, and iron is forced to precipitate out of the rock.” (But will I remember this info?)
  3. Remember I told you about the inefficiency of Home Depot last month? The saga continued. After not being able to fit the mini-fridge in Fernando, I took it back into the store to put it on will call. The self-checkout had neglected to provide a receipt, so it took a very long time to set things up. Trail Guy and I returned for the fridge the following week, and it was gone. They chose another model for us through lots of computer tapping and lots of wasted time, and when we went to retrieve it, it didn’t exist either. We picked a third model, loaded it up, and figured it was a done deal. Then I started getting phone calls to come pick up my “merchandise”. The first caller didn’t even identify the store, much less the “merchandise”. The second caller did, so I called back to be sure I wasn’t getting charged for two. Sure enough, I was. Much computer tapping, hold time, exchange of various numbers and dates, and now I think it is solved. THIS IS WHY I HATE TO GO SHOPPING!!! Excuse me for shouting. If it isn’t at the Three Rivers Mercantile, I don’t need it.
    Maybe we should have hooked this fridge up in the workshop instead of the new one from Home Disaster.
  4. Sometimes when our cabin neighbors leave, they give us their extra groceries. That way they don’t have to toss them or take them home. It is fun! We don’t always consume everything, of course. Last month we received a tub of potato salad, something I don’t usually eat because I just don’t like potatoes or raw onions. Trail Guy had a bite and said it was sweet. “Sweet?” I read the ingredients, and the third one on the list was SUGAR!! Really?? In potato salad?? Why on earth?
  5. Peripheral neuropathy makes toes go numb and can be helped by L-methylfolate, a B vitamin referred to as a “medical food”. I don’t know if it works yet but I do know that numb toes are a nuisance while hiking (or walking or standing to paint or just being alive). I wish I didn’t have to learn about this.
  6. If you know this amazing lady, congratulate her on a promotion to Chief Ranger at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area!
  7. There are some people who exceed the average definition of generosity in life. These are people who donate organs, people who pay for meal services for recipients of organs (one of my incredibly generous blog readers is paying for a meal service for my friends Rachelle-of-new-lungs and Steven-the-husband-of-the-century), and someone who received a heart and now helps transplant patients and their families. Her name is Ava and you can see her story (and give if you are so inclined) here: Ava’s Heart.
  8. Some customers/friends have been wanting a logo for many years. I recommended someone to them and it didn’t work out. Why didn’t they think to ask me, or why didn’t I think to offer? Because logo design is not my main thing, but after a year passed, I got the courage to offer my feeble design services. More will be revealed in the fullness of time. What I learned was this: ask!
  9. Fake Crocs cost less, have a thicker sole, are narrower, and don’t have a visible brand name; they are made in China and sold by Amazon. Lesson learned. I liked the color, but I got a blister on the TOP of my toe (hunh??) and tripped twice while walking in them so they will become hang-around shoes, not walking shoes.
  10. Sending cookies from Three Rivers to Los Angeles costs $14 via UPS and $9 via the Post Office.
  11. Is Three Rivers in a third world country? Our neighborhood went 5 days with extreme minimal water due to a failed pump and unavailable part. This coincided with the largest power bill we have ever had, while our A/C is on a voluntary rolling black-out discount because there isn’t enough electricity in California. (Can you believe that hydroelectric power – using rivers – is considered non-renewable energy??)
  12. My neighbors are very generous and let me use their swimming pool. What I learned while in the pool is that Cleveland Sage smells terrific and overpowers the smell of chlorine.
    Swamp onion does NOT smell like Cleveland Sage.

P.S. Stupid HD just sent me a check for the amount of the fridge. WHATSA MATTUH WITH THOSE PEOPLE??

 

Things I learned (and probably forgot) in previous Julys.

July 2020 ° July 2019 ° July 2018

Meandering in Mineral King

Warning: Long post ahead.

For some reason, choosing a destination and then chugging up a steep trail just isn’t floating my boat this summer. We did a quick down-the-road-and-up-the-Nature-Trail. 

Are these Baby’s Breath? Maybe.
These are fireweed. They are common in Alaska, and I recently saw them on a Russian photographer’s Instagram post. 
Sierra Currant – still haven’t formed berries. You first saw them here.
This bridge on the Nature Trail is listing downstream.
Almost back to the cabin from walking the Nature Trail. Looked as if it might rain – nope, bluffers.

We took a meandering walk with some cabin friends. When Trail Guy asked where we wanted to go, the friends said anything at all was fine with them. I said, “The aspens are calling me”. 

First, we went up the canyon toward Crystal Creek. This year the wildflowers are doing very well where it crosses the trail. This might be normal, but maybe I never paid much attention before because I was always aiming toward other patches of flowers. This year I am thankful for any green and any flowers that I can find.

We meandered to Soda Springs, and along the way we saw my favorite flower: Explorer’s Gentian.

I would like to know why some of these places are called “Soda” and others are called “Iron”. They all look like bubbling water that turns the ground orange; they all have the same yucky taste. Onward to the aspens. . .

Then we meandered down the old route AKA “old Farewell Gap Trail”. Nope, not a trail – it is simply a route. It was GREEN!! As we meandered, we found some things that normally wouldn’t be seen if we were thundering along a trail. Bane Berry is new to me – learned from one of my books that it is poisonous. (Good thing our friend held back from tasting it in spite of being tempted.)

What’s this? More Iron Springs? Soda Springs? Rusty Water?

Another Iron Springs, dried up?

Back at the cabin, I admired the Corn Lilies in bloom. This is an unusually heavy year for flowers on these plants that are usually just green, looking like and getting called “Skunk Cabbage”.

And thus we conclude another Mineral King meander.

Doing Nothing in Mineral King

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD.That title is not exactly true. We sat around, took a short walk to Crystal Creek, visited with neighbors, rearranged garbage in the dumpster and examined the difficult lock, met the temporary law-enforcement ranger, napped, watched the curtains flap in a windstorm, enjoyed a bit of rain. I also painted, read and knit. But we did not hike, because it was too hot.

The overcast provided relief from the heat, as did the precipitation one afternoon.

We pried ourselves off the porch and ambled up to Crystal Creek. (This photo is darker than reality in spite of messing with it on the computer.)

It is a banner year for baby’s breath close to Crystal Creek.

Crystal Creek was very low but adequate to water some very nice wildflowers in their prime. (To learn the names, perhaps you might like to buy a copy of Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names.)

Walking back, we admired the corn lilies, which are having a rare year of bloom. Can you recognize the Honeymoom Cabin from this side?

Federal Highways has big plans to redo the Park’s section of the Mineral King Road, and part of the plan is to expand and pave the parking lot at the end of the road. There is a juniper of historical significance in the parking lot, now in jeopardy. You can see the dead tree to the left; the juniper to the right is just fine. It is somewhat camouflaged in this photo.

The blue paint lines mean the tree is going to be removed. I don’t want it to be removed! Does anyone know a certified arborist who can verify the health of the tree? Maybe the Park would listen to someone with Important Papers and Capital Letters. (My Most Important Papers about being Exeter Woman of the Year in 1998 don’t count, nor do the capital letters DBO).

Here is a more familiar angle of the Honeymoon Cabin, which serves as a mini-museum for the Mineral King Preservation Society.Meanwhile, back near the cabin, I found more corn lilies in bloom, a new mint, and a blooming swamp onion.

Above Timber Gap

Over the Fourth of July weekend, our cabin neighborhood was full of friends who happen to have cabins near each other. That’s the best way I can describe our little enclave of rustic shacks in Mineral King. Some of the neighbors spent a day on the trail to Hockett Meadow for a 23 mile hike. Some of us did something a bit more manageable.

It was a beautifully clear day when we set out around 9 a.m. No matter how many photos I take of this scene from the bridge, each time I am sure it is the best it has ever looked.

Sometimes I take this photo downstream too. This time I took it because soon the 2 trees by that cabin will be gone.

We went to Timber Gap and then up to the left (it felt really really up-ish), back down into the gap, and crashed around until we stumbled on the old wagon road built in the mining era.

This is the view over Timber Gap to the Middle Fork of the Kaweah drainage. If I study the view and squint hard, I can pick out Alta Peak, the mountain that is visible from our house.

This is the view of Mineral King from the slope above Timber Gap on the west. (It is where I took my reference photos for the giant Mineral King mural in Exeter.)

We headed back into Timber Gap and decided we were all game to find the old wagon road.

Trail Guy said it is hard to find from Timber Gap, and I agreed, except that I always manage to crash around and stumble across it in spite of the vagueness of that method. Once again, it worked.

There were five of us, but we took no selfies or group shots. After this photo, I put my camera away because: 1. I have taken many photos of this before and 2. it was prudent to watch my steps carefully.

On the Fourth of July, we had a little spontaneous flag-raising.

It almost took a village, but mostly it took Trail Guy and a Yacht Master.

God bless the USA and God bless our neighbor-friends!

 

 

Trail Guy’s Hike

This may be Trail Guy’s favorite hike in Mineral King. It is White Chief, and then over the ridge down into the Farewell Gap drainage. I wasn’t there, but his photos always land on my computer, so you get a bonus Mineral King post.

Mountain Pride, or Pride of the Mountains
Lupine overlooking a little pond in the White Chief area (NOT White Chief Lake)
Sawtooth is the lighter one with Mineral Peak, AKA Sawtooth’s Shadow, beneath.
Trail Guy took this picture because it is a spring on a slope that our dear friend Louise loves.
Yawn. Just another beautiful day.
This heart rock was a Leaverite – “leave ‘er right where you found ‘er.” Nice photo, TG!
This is the same trail we walked on our “easy” 8 mile hike.
This is the weird view along the trail when looking up to Farewell Gap.
Hey, Jess, Trail Guy took this photo for you!
Mariposa Lilies are abundant this year. Sometimes we find real short ones along the trail.
Not many Tiger lilies (AKA Leopard lilies) this year, but our noses usually find them, even if they are within a patch of swamp onion. These onions haven’t blossomed yet.

So Green in Mineral King

Trail Guy and I took a hike with The Farmer and Hiking Buddy. It was the easiest 8 miles that one can hike in Mineral King, meaning the trail has a good grade and a flat trail bed (not many roots and rocks to trip over). But it felt like a very long distance. (Is this what it means to be in the S’s??)

Where? Good question, thanks for asking. (That’s what most interviewees say these days – have you noticed that?) The junction of Franklin Lake and Farewell Gap trails. We usually choose it for the ease and the wildflowers, which aren’t very profuse this year. There is a good variety, but they are scattered.

Whorled penstemon are a vivid bluish-purple in real life. My camera doesn’t know how to record the correct color, although the green is right.
The sulphur flower was brilliant. Guess you had to be there.
Franklin Falls was perfect, as always. Normal people rock hop across. I wade.
The trail looks a little cliff-hanger-ish in a few places.
But it is worth it, and not terribly scary because the trail bed is flat.
This is the scariest part, and it isn’t really very scary.
The junction of the Farewell Gap and Franklin Lake trails is higher than Timber Gap. Usually the flowers are great there, but this isn’t a banner year for flowers.
There are flowers there, just not as thick in the past several summers. Wait, last summer wasn’t very good either. Next year, perhaps?
The peak on the left is Vandever, the right side of Farewell Gap. The one to the right of that is an unnamed bump.
Ahhh, back to the valley floor. I love this view, especially when it is so very green.
We had some special guests, but I will allow them to remain anonymous because this is the World Wide Web.
Blurry photo of the only iris I have ever seen in MK. Some years I miss it, but not this year! And it isn’t on the trail to Franklin or Farewell – just wanted to show you as a little bonus for reading to the end.

11 Things Learned in June

My list for June was quite short and I was about to make an excuse; then I gave it all another think, and here is the longest one in awhile.

  1. For the very first time in my entire 61 years, I attended an open casket funeral, where the deceased was visible. It wasn’t one of those deals where the attendees file past if they are so inclined – he was fully visible from every place in the chapel. “Disconcerted” might be the best word for how I felt.
  2. I described A House in the Sky to my hiking buddy, a memoir about a woman’s experience of a 460 day kidnapping situation. Her husband asked me why I would want to read such a disturbing tale, which made me think. My conclusion is that it was interesting, and it caused me to be very very very thankful for my life. (Maybe 4 verys, or even 5).
  3. Live oaks are dying all around my neighborhood. Drought? Maybe, maybe not. The native trees are “designed” to live in our climate, which historically has droughts (or dry years) every 5-6 years, as learned by studying the rings on Giant Sequoia trees. 
  4. As I dithered on whether or not to get my 25 year old car painted, it occurred to me that I could spend the equivalent amount of money on looking better myself, something that would probably only last for 3 months, as opposed to the car looking good for the rest of its life. (No decision has been reached.)
  5. Leaky canoes at Hume Lake seem to be a normal thing. Oh well. It was nice on the lake regardless.
  6. This site is fun and helpful: Everyday Cheapskate 
  7. Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter is an education about what happens to all the stuff in the world when we are finished with it. It can be put in a landfill, incinerated, taken apart for recycling, dismantled for parts, or used by other people. Poor countries import massive amounts and use it in all these ways; of particular interest to me was the innovative ways our junk gets used to build useful items. (Remember, “Junk is the stuff we get rid of; stuff is the junk we keep”.) Some countries have laws against importing secondhand items; other countries have laws against exporting them. Those laws cause a problem for the economies that depend on secondhand products. The planned obsolescence is also causing problems. Having replaced our water heater, washing machine, refrigerator, and the A/C in my studio within the past year, I can relate to this. But then how do I get my broken things to Ghana or Nigeria so they can use the parts??
  8. Some friends shared some new peppers from their garden, called “Padrone”. Green, wrinkled, and not hot. I wonder if they would grow in Three Rivers. . . maybe I can save a few seeds.*
  9. A farmer friend told me the way to understand climate and weather is to look up something called “degree days”. I haven’t studied it, but according to my friend, there are going to be a certain number of hot and cold days every year. He gave these examples: if there is a cool spring, it will be a hot summer; if it is mild summer, it will last a long time. I would like to understand it in terms of weather, but it is used mostly to predict energy usage to heat and cool. Here is the explanation from the National Weather Service.
  10. Big box stores are inefficient, overstaffed with incompetent employees, disorganized, dependent on computers for inventory which waste the customers’ time and prove to be unreliable. I’m talking about Home Depot. Good Grief Charlie Brown. Nope, not going on social media to badmouth them; just hoping I can always plan ahead enough to have Three Rivers Mercantile order what is needed to avoid future aggravation of HD.
  11. You might be able to have a say in the redistricting of California that happens every 10 years. Why bother? A good example is that Three Rivers is lumped with Bakersfield, Ridgecrest and Lancaster, where no one goes, instead of being with Woodlake, Exeter, and Visalia, where most people work, shop (HEY! We have a great hardware store in Three Rivers!), go to school, go to church (HEY! We have churches in Three Rivers too!) access county and state offices. The site is DrawMyCACommunity.org I say “might” because I don’t have a lot of confidence in governmental requests for public participation. I couldn’t find the already drawn community called “Three Rivers-Visalia COI” to “endorse” it, as the newspaper article suggested. Everything is complicated.

Let’s rest our minds with something less complicated.

*Never mind. Just found a hot one. Burned my mouth.

 

 

Hot Mineral King Time

When it is hot down the hill, we also think it is hot in Mineral King. “Hot” is a relative term, but when one is in the sun, with mosquitos and biting flies, one is uncomfortable on several whiny levels.

Here is a brief summary:

  1. The bottom mile of the road has been repaved; the upper sections continue to worsen.
  2. The biting flies and mosquitos are out in full force.
  3. People are still wrapping up their cars since the marmots are still feeding their young; theory (or perhaps it is “settled science”) has it that the lactating females are the ones who damage cars.
  4. The wildflowers are decent this year and many varieties are appearing earlier than usual.
Very green in spite of low water (that blue spot is a tarped car).
See? GREEN!
A single iris in bloom across the creek from us incites envy – in 30+ years I have only had one iris bloom.
A cabin neighbor has the most interesting door handle with a spoon for a latch (is that the latch? or is it a trigger?)
The fire crews left many piles like this around the cabins. They look as if they are waiting for a match – how’s that for irony?
The crimson columbine are early with a few profuse patches along the Nature Trail.
No biting flies or mosquitos show in the photo and you can’t feel the heat and humidity either; I braved both to bring you this photo.
This little weird flower is everywhere around Mineral King and nowhere in my wildflower books.
It is also almost impossible to get a clear photo – I deleted about 10 blurry versions.
The Mariposa lilies are thick along the last 1/4 miles of the road, looking like polka dots among the sage and ferns.

 

Jibber-jabber about blogging

“Blog” is a clunky word. It means an online journal, or a “web log”, condensed into the word “blog.

My first web designer showed me how to post to a blog. This was on April 15, 2008, and for awhile, I posted any time that an idea came to me. It was way more fun than I ever expected to have with a computer.

A few years into it, I started chasing down “experts” to learn how to “grow my platform”. I searched for interesting blogs, commented, wrote a few guest posts for other blogs, and even made a few virtual friends. There were formulas to follow about how often to post, how to arrange things, title things, and always end with a question to engage your readers. It took up time that may have been better spent painting or drawing or finding customers and new students. After a few years of this without any noticeable growth in my subscribers, I decided to forget about growing a “platform”. I’d rather grow thyme, rhododendrons, poppies, and maybe a few cucumbers or pumpkins. (Perhaps I am a rogue blogger, along with being a rogue knitter, baker, and painter.) 

Now with over 12 years of posting five days a week, mostly about making art and earning a living with unnecessary products in an unlikely place, it is automatic. A handful of people subscribe, mostly friends and relatives, and even a few strangers who have become real friends through the blog over the years. I don’t remember how to check my subscriber list, and it doesn’t really matter. I have no illusions (or delusions) that I will become either the Yarn Harlot or the Pioneer Woman of art. This is just a place for a solo working artist to stay accountable, to write because I seem to have lots to say about what I do, to keep track of what I have accomplished, to gather feedback when working alone threatens to make me even weirder than my sisters think I am, and maybe even to get a commission or a few sales.

I appreciate every single reader of this blog and am particularly thrilled when someone comments. I wish I knew how to thank my readers in a tangible way, but the best way I know is to keep posting, stay quiet about the stuff that divides people, be polite, don’t cuss and resist the pressure to “monetize”. I hate it when people cuss on their blogs, and I hate it when people whose writing I like get rude or political, have pop-up windows that interrupt my reading, have advertising or a begging button, so I will not to go down those dark alleys here.

Thank you for being here with me!

This is how my painting workshop and studio looked when I first started the blog. It was thrilling to have space at home to work and blank places to practice painting murals.

 

We’ve come a long way.