California has 21 missions, built in the 1700s or perhaps some in the 1800s. I don’t remember all the details from 4th grade, but I still love seeing those extremely ancient buildings. I detoured slightly on the way home from Gilroy to visit the mission in San Juan Bautista. It is better cared for than when I drew 30-something years ago. (Can’t find it to show you now. . .)
Across the street was an old building. It looked Victorian, not mission style, and it had a Texas flag. Weird.
California Highway 101 used to be called “El Camino Real”, which means The King’s Highway. All along are these old bells, except now I think the ones which haven’t yet been stolen are reproductions.
I have such a sense of awe, respect, curiosity, and a bit of excitement when I get to be at buildings this old. (Prolly would pass out if I ever made it to Ireland.)
San Juan Bautista is a small agricultural town; I don’t know what is growing in the fields down there.
When walking back to Mom’s Car, I took a picture of this saggy roof. (It reminded me of our cabin.)
Time to go home and get back to work.
P.S. I painted the Carmel Mission last year when at that weeklong painting retreat. It is fancier than San Juan Bautista.
Mrs. Texas and I chose to have a second beach day, this time in Monterey. While there for a weeklong painting retreat last year, I still didn’t have enough time to do all I had hoped. One of those things was to tour the Point Pinos Lighthouse, a place I painted while perched on the hood of my car, Fernando (and then fixed/finished later in the painting workshop and sold.)
It was an overcast day, and we arrived before the lighthouse opened. So, we went to the beach.
Suddenly it was time to go to the lighthouse for a tour.
Excellent tour! So much information, so much to see, such helpful docents. I just couldn’t get enough of walking around, examining the rooms, the artifacts, the displays. This might be a sign of advancing age, sort of like bird-watching, pickleball, eating dinner at 4:30, discussing physical ailments, spending money on nutritional supplements, and watching Jeopardy. (Not that I do any of those things. . .yet, anyway.)
We weren’t allowed to go to the very top where the balcony circles the light. After the tour, I went inside and asked what that gizmo is atop the chimney, a chimney which isn’t connected to a fireplace. It isn’t a giant’s binoculars; it is a chimney cap or spark arrester, placed there when the kitchen was in that room with its woodburning stove, now in another section of the house.
Some people were setting up for a wedding as we were leaving.
The lighthouse was used as a position of defense during WWII, with Coast Guard stationed on the premises in barracks built for the purpose. They patrolled with dogs and horses. Check out this application for a dog to be part of the patrol (oops, it is blurry here):
I could just go on and on about what we learned about the lighthouse, but I think you’d click off this site. So, we went back to the beach, because we didn’t want to get stuck in traffic heading back to Gilroy. (Are we seeing a pattern here? yeppers)
Still overcast, and kind of coldThe beach was littered with jellyfish and various pieces of jellyfish. Gross but fascinating. I watched my steps very carefully, because of course I was barefooted.
Mrs. Texas was in California for another handful of weeks, and I felt compelled to go back to see her one more time. So, I did. (There is a lot to be said about driving a car that isn’t potentially on its last gasp.)
We did a number of wonderful things, and I even did some plein air painting! (See? a business trip!)
Since I have nothing to show you about Mineral King today, I will start with the beach.
The day I arrived, we returned to Rio Del Mar, the beach with that ruined cement party boat which used to be attached to a pier. Mrs. Texas’s mom had told her sister that she remembers dancing on that boat!
There is a weird metal rectangle in the sand.
I think there is a pier in Capitola in the very far distance, but we didn’t go to a beach there. We did go to Capitola to get groceries at Trader Joe’s because it was a good alternative to sitting in traffic on the way home.
The next day we walked by a reservoir named Uvas, which means grapes in Español. (We didn’t see any, in case you are wondering.) My inferior phone camera did a nice job there. Several of these photos could make a nice painting, but I don’t think my tens of readers/followers/collectors are into obscure reservoirs in distant counties (although I would fill the lake to the brim for better aesthetics).
Some of the oak trees had Spanish moss, the slightly creepy hanging grayish green stuff that is prevalent in the southern states.
The plaque at the entrance to the lake walk had a list of names of people who were instrumental in building the dam that created the lake. Although they were just names to me, I’m sure they matter to their descendants. I was more interested in the pertinent facts, which they so thoughtfully included with all those names.
In all honesty (because that is how I roll), I’d rather be at the beach. However, the reservoir was closer, and we had other plans that day. (Not bloggable, just friendship things, errands, blah blah blah. . .)
But I did paint that evening, and I’ll show you in the next post.
Well, why not? It’s my blog and I can digress if I want to. It doesn’t have to be all about Mineral King, drawing, oil painting, and Three Rivers—okay, the beach, odd jobs, drawing lessons, the business of art, editing, or plein air painting either.
This is the eighth summer reunion with my childhood friend at her Hume Lake cabin. Hume Lake Christian Camp was established in 1946 on a lake in Sequoia National Forest which began as a timber pond. From there, logs were sent almost 60 miles downstream (to Sanger) on a wooden flume to be turned into lumber. Maybe it was called a “lumber pond”. . . I wasn’t born yet. The camp is a very active place, with over 300 private cabins on leased land above the conference grounds. The lake fronts the Christian camp with a 3 mile trail around it, a dam on the east end (weird to me that a lake drains east, but it goes into Kings Canyon instead of the Pacific Ocean), with a Forest Service campground, fishing, and two ways in and out of the area.
This is looking northeast, past the dam into the majestic spires of Kings Canyon.
A large amount of time was spent on this deck.
A fair amount of time was also spent indoors. It was a hot weekend. An entire day was spent waiting for a tree crew to finish limbing and dropping trees around the cabin; we needed to be present but it was somewhat treacherous outdoors.
There were several walks around the lake.
We had a nice afternoon on the lake. There were kayaks, paddle boards, canoes, but I pushed for a rowboat so I could do the rowing. Eventually my two pals couldn’t stand the idleness of passenger living, and I had to share the oars.
On a somewhat solitary walk around the lake (my companions declined but there were plenty of strangers), I left the trail and followed the road back to camp because I wanted to see the cabins on Forest Service land. (Does this surprise you?)
We had other adventures, much conversation and laughter, good food (but almost no sweets because we are all fighting sugar, which took remarkable restraint since Hume’s Snack Shack is known for its milkshakes), some excellent Bible teaching (it is a big deal Christian camp so there are always outstanding speakers available), and there were a handful of moments of What Happens at Hume Stays at Hume.
See you next year, Hume Lake (if my dear friend from childhood chooses to continue our tradition.)
P.S. OF COURSE it was a business trip, my first in Mom’s Car. (That’s the car’sname for now.)
For those new to my blog, Mineral King is an area of Sequoia National Park where I spend copious amounts of time in the summer. Next Friday I will provide a more in depth explanation.
Today’s post is a long one. You’ve been warned. . .
The road is under construction, so it is a mess, and there is a schedule to follow. This is what we saw at the bottom of the road.
We stopped by Silver City to deliver paintings and cards.
I’m given quite a bit of leeway in placing the pieces and actually took my own nails, easels, and hammer.
That’s my design on the tee shirt in the background.This is that tall narrow space for which I paint something tall and narrow each season.The most popular subject—sold a 6×6” version of it on the weekend.
Shortly after arriving at the cabin, we headed back to a friend’s cabin with an enormous tree blocking her driveway. The men didn’t have big enough chainsaws but eliminated some parts to create a path around, carried some of her gear up to the cabin for her, and supplied a hand-truck so she could get things back down to her car later. “Did you see Tracy’s tree?” was a question we heard many times over our stay.
She had some good flowers in her driveway.
Very very tiny unknowns.Five spot is the name of these cuties. Those leaves in the center look like a cactus. What in the world??
Hiking Buddy and I hoofed it back up the road to our cabins.
I had a nice afternoon of watching the daffodils and untangling yarn from a sweater that fit me wrong.
Our after-dinner walk was beautiful, but my camera is fairly inadequate for this sort of lighting.
However, it is perfectly fine for this sort.
The next day was busy for the men as they assisted cabin neighbors in various opening tasks. However, I had time to continue watching daffodils bloom.
Hiking Buddy and I ventured up to Spring Creek to see if the bridge had been installed yet. Nope.
When the men were available, we took a walk together.
Some of the cottonwoods had quite a few broken branches, and one was swinging precariously. The guys tried to dislodge the widow-maker, but it survived (and so did the guys—no widows were made.)
Crystal Creek is running well, very wide and shallow (sort of like Facebook).
There was more time in the afternoon for unraveling that sweater and watching the daffodils.
More walks (I am unsure about hiking with my peripheral neuropathy this year. . . more will be revealed, but for now, walks are fine with me.)
These are the tiniest blue lips I’ve ever seen! All I had so that you can appreciate the size is this chapstick (okay, Carmex, but who knows what that is?) in my pocket.
It was chilly in the evenings so we gathered with friends around this ring of fire. (Someone besides me was wearing Crocs—mine show at the bottom).
Look at the daffodils just 3 days later. Yellow wildflowers are a little bit boring to me, but daffodils are neither wild nor boring.
It wasn’t a hot weekend, and the drive down was quite beautiful. Almost all the wildflowers were yellow, and I wasn’t bored. Bush poppy, flannel bush, blazing star, monkey flowers—all yellow. The bush poppies are prolific and abundant. I didn’t photograph the areas where they cover the hillside, because it isn’t prudent to stop the Botmobile on steep slopes or blind corners or when the road is just one lane or if someone is on our six and there is no turnout.
The lupine are hanging on too.
Thus we conclude our very long post about Mineral King. Next week I will show some Mineral King art (because this is my business blog and I came here to earn a living—any questions?) and explain for my new far-away friends a little bit about this place we locals love so dearly.
On a recent weekend, I said to Trail Guy, “I MUST paint on Monday! Do not distract me, and please, please, if you see me messing around in the yard or the house, remind me that I must paint because I messed around all week, postponing painting!”
On Monday, he said, “Want to drive up South Fork? I haven’t been there in a long time and I want to see how the repairs from the ’23 flood and the fires look.”
NO! NONONO!
Then I gave it another thought and remembered that spring does not last forever. (Yes, thank you Gnat, I know it is always spring somewhere in the world, but I am only here, not anywhere else.)
So I said yes.
He said it would only be an hour; I said it would probably be three hours.
It was very green but nothing looked photo-worthy until we saw Homer’s Nose.
This is looking back at the new bridge, built in 2021.
The road ended about 1/4 to 1/2 mile below the campground. About a dozen cars were parked along the road. I wondered where all the people went, and Trail Guy wondered how they would get turned around on such a narrow road. (We turned around with about a 5-point turn.)
There were three women walking along the road, and Trail Guy stopped to talk to them. Two are sisters from LA who have owned a home near the South Fork Campground since 1974 (well, the property—I don’t know what year the house was built). They were very interesting and told us to stop by to view the lupine from their deck. They were convinced that lupine seeds were scattered during fire fighting operations, when “ping-pongs” were dropped from the air to start back-fires. (Scary!)
They had great wildflowers in their yard.
One last photo as we headed down the road. If I hadn’t felt the need to do some painting, if my camera battery hadn’t croaked, if we had brought lunch, I would have taken another 2 hours or so for photography. Doesn’t matter, it clouded up, and we headed home.
Today’s post is about beauty, because April is beautiful around here. Color and light is a source of inspiration for paintings. (Detail and light inspires my pencil drawings.)
On my way down to work at the Mural Gallery I stopped in the usual turnout for a photo of the lake.
On the way home, I drove over Rocky HIll and took many photos. This is a small sample, and there are lots of painting ideas here.
Any one of these photos could be turned into a painting. There are even more photos that I didn’t show you.
There is an excellent museum in Three Rivers, and parked in front are some old fire trucks plus this tow truck. I had to wait for a couple of friends stuck at one of the many ongoing lengthy roadblocks, so I wandered around with my inferior phone camera.
On a recent walk, I took this photo because it reminded me of my painting titled Swinging Oak. You can see it below with a convenient link for purchasing from my website. It’s just business. (I’m tryna earn a living here!)
Swinging Oak, oil on wrapped canvas, 12×16″, $375 (plus tax in California) Available here
Where’s the other chair?
Why am I not showing you any paintings or drawings? Because I am spending most of my time in the studio, editing another book for another writer on another topic.
