Fascinating and Ugly

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You may recall that there was some serious rain this winter in Three Rivers. I was fascinated by all the rushing water and posted a few times about it in March. March 11, March 12, and  March 13. (Probably posted in January and February too, but who wants to chase down all those links?)

One result of that enormous amount of water is that Kaweah Lake filled up very quickly. Now, the Army Corps of Engineers is letting water out as fast as possible to make room for the large amount of anticipated snowmelt. This means we can now walk down at the lake bottom again, and wow, is it ever fascinating and ugly.

Looking upstream from the Slick Rock parking area; Alta Peak is visible with snow on it and Blossom Peak has three points on the far right.

Normally when the lake is this low, this gate is open and we drive farther down. Not this time.

There’s a culvert beneath our feet here. It had to be roaring through to create this canyon.

The water is still flowing through the culvert; that is Highway 198 above.

Somebody was here when the mud was still squishy.

Driftwood galore.

So many layers of different types of dirt: silt, fine sand, coarse sand, all so thick.

It started getting a little squishy.

Look how deep this stuff is!

Too bad backhoes and trucks can’t come get this for fill on all the washed out roads, for future sandbags, and just to allow the lake to hold more water. But this is owned by the government, which isn’t exactly known for practical thinking or helpful practices.

Weirdly fascinating, definitely ugly. Life in Three Rivers can be so varied and interesting; if one must live in Tulare County, I vote for Three Rivers (although Exeter is an awfully nice town if you like town living, I dearly loved living in Lemon Cove, and Springville is quite beautiful in springtime.)

Tomorrow we will wash our eyes out with some wildflowers.

A post about walking on the lake bottom in March of 2020 is here. . . scroll down for the lake pictures.

Chasing the Sun in Three Rivers

So far, we are having a most welcome wet winter in Three Rivers. This results in Trail Guy and I chasing the sun. In the past handful of winters, we could walk around on the lake bottom (Kaweah Lake, formed by Terminus Dam on the Kaweah River when I was about 4 or 5 years old).

This year, it is flooded. The dam was built for flood control, irrigation storage, and recreation. Right now the focus is on flood control. Before it was built, Visalia, about 30 miles west, flooded. The last big flood was 1955. (I wasn’t born, so I don’t remember.)

This is looking west, walking along the road that used to be the main way in and out of Three Rivers, until the dam was built.

Looks like our short walk ends here.

Looks nice and green, but most of the ground around the lakebed is thick with cockleburs. They love socks and frayed hems and gortex shoes.

Turning back, this is the view. That’s Alta Peak, also visible from home. Yeppers, that’s the peak with an elephant in profile, visible when there is snow.

Is this lake or river? How about both. It is where the river meets and becomes lake.

Here’s one last big view of Alta. Can you see the elephant? I showed you in this post back in January last year..

Tomorrow, we will chase the water (damage) in Three Rivers and up the Mineral King Road.

Kaweah Lake Paintings, Part 2

These are more recent paintings of The Lake, also known as Lake Kaweah, and Kaweah Lake. In addition to not remembering the correct way to state the name, I often wonder if it is in Lemon Cove or Three Rivers. 

Life is full of unanswered questions.

This painting of Kaweah Lake was done in 2014, probably on a 6×6″ canvas.
Painted in 2015
Painted in an unknown year.
Same painting, repainted in another unknown year as my skill grew. 

I also painted the lake other ways.

The Lake, oil on wrapped canvas, 4×6″, $50

 

This was painted in my phase of making colors brighter than they appear in real life.

That concludes our tour through paintings of Kaweah Lake. Tomorrow we’ll move on to other topics.

Kaweah Lake

As I refreshed the mural at the Tulare County South Fork fire station #14 in Three Rivers (sorry for all the words – it helps Uncle Google find my posts), I thought of all the times I have painted Kaweah Lake. This subject isn’t as popular as Mineral King, of course, but very little is that popular.

These are the first ones I painted of the lake, back in 2007 when I had only been oil painting about a year. I didn’t have a good inventory system set up yet, so I don’t know the sizes. I think they were either 4×6″ or 5×7″. Who bought them? I don’t know that either. If you own one of these, THANK YOU!

These were painted a bit later, maybe in 2009. I still didn’t record the sizes and didn’t yet have a scanner or Photoshop Junior. This is the same year that I first painted the water tank at the Tulare County South Fork fire station.

2009, when the mural was new, after I practiced the subject at least 8 times on canvases and boards.

We’ll continue our tour of Kaweah Lake on Tuesday.

A Day of Variety

Sometimes it is a little hard to work from home. There are many other things requesting attention, opportunities to be productive in other ways, chances to just lollygag around or find other occupations. Last week I had such a day.

It began with wandering outside while drinking coffee and seeing a bit of pruning, and then finding Tucker in my herb garden.

See why I want to be outside this time of year?

Notice that these flowers are in the primary colors.

Next, I made plans with a friend for a walk at the lake early in the afternoon, and that made me willing to dive back into work, knowing my time was limited to paint. Sometimes deadlines help me to focus.

This was dry enough to begin detailing until it was time to gather up my friend and head to Kaweah Lake. (Oh-oh, I can’t remember if it is Kaweah Lake or Lake Kaweah again; what’s with the mental block on this subject? This may be why we’ve always called it “The Lake”.) We just walked in the lake bottom, not close to the lake except where it covered the pretty bridge.

The lake level is rising slowly. We walked to beneath the Horse Creek Bridge, and the mustard was striking.

After our walk,  I was able to paint a bit longer on the Mineral King cabin oil painting commission. I think I can get even more detailed on this, but it needs to dry a bit more.

And thus we conclude a day of work combined with distractions.

Mildly Interesting

Happy Birthday, Trail Guy!

Trail Guy and I drove down to Lake Kaweah (The Lake) to take a walk one morning in December before the rain turned it into a quagmire. At one point as we bumbled along, Trail Guy said to me, “Isn’t this exciting?” I responded, “No, but it is mildly interesting”.

The day was overcast and the colors were dull.
In spite of being the last day of Autumn, the sycamores were holding their color in the various drainages that lead down to The Lake.
Cockleburs are abundant and obnoxious. They are native to many places in the US but I didn’t care enough to find out which areas.
Cockleburs love socks. (Yes, I did knit those – thank you for your interest!)
I always notice blue things. There are many blue caps to various beverage containers.
I only photographed these and left many others undocumented.
It’s pretty trashy in the lake bottom. I never remember to bring a sack; maybe it is because it feels hopeless and because it will be too heavy to drag around.
Trail Guy likes to go poking around in the boulder clusters; he says he thinks he might find a body there. I think most bodies found in Tulare County are in orange groves.
There were no bodies, only a pair of abandoned socks. I didn’t inspect them for cockleburs but I wonder if that is why they got left behind.
I found a treasure!

Kaweah Lake Oil Painting

Yesterday I doubted whether anyone would be interested in oil paintings of Kaweah Lake, which led to an email correspondence with a friend who has a friend who just might be interested. I sent this photo to her of the most recent (and only) painting I have of Lake Kaweah, Kaweah Lake, or as we say around here, “The Lake”.

The Lake, oil on wrapped canvas, 4×6″, $50

While looking for my photo of The Lake, I realized that I’ve painted it quite a few times. Why didn’t I remember? Because I have so many other subjects crowding it out of the limited space in my top-of-mind memory.

P. S. It’s official – Lake Kaweah, not Kaweah Lake. Thank you SD!

The Lake as a Metaphor

Prepare yourself for a long essay today. I hope you can recover from this major bloviation by tomorrow when I post about early spring in Three Rivers. Yes, I still work . . . you can see more paintings in progress next week. But February is my favorite month, so for now I am choosing to show you the beauty of Three Rivers instead of paintings in progress.

While at Kaweah Lake recently with Trail Guy, it occurred to me that our lake can serve as a metaphor for life in Tulare County. Think about these comparisons.

Tulare County is in the Central Valley, California’s “flyover country”, meaning the part people just blow through or over to get where they really want to go, like San Francisco, Napa Valley, Los Angeles, Death Valley, or Yosemite (“Oh dear, must we first go to Fresno? horrors!”). 

While puttering around on the lake bottom (more around the edges, because it has been filling up lately), I thought of all the people flying past on the highway above, probably unaware of what the lake below has to offer. Isn’t a lake for sailing? This one, not so much. How about water skiing? Sure, in the earlier half of summer, not in February. Looks empty, meh, keep driving. 

Someone’s beloved home was once here.

 

Here was the stone fireplace; over there must have been the bathroom. A small living space with large views in a great location.

Tulare County is poor and uneducated, with bad air, fat people, high welfare, diabetes and teen pregnancies. Not too appealing, eh?

Kaweah Lake’s drained floor is kind of cruddy. We pick up aluminum cans and shake out the mud and gross stuff before squashing them. We slip and slide on the slimy mud that is coating the old road. We pick cockleburs out of our shoelaces and the shaggy edges of my unhemmed jeans. There is a lot of trash and broken things. It is a cheap place to visit for recreation compared to Sequoia—$4-5 per car instead of $30-35 for Sequoia. (Can’t remember exactly, so I am guessing at the actual numbers.)

Tulare County has been my home for almost 60 years (minus a few misguided years in college), and I work hard to find the good things here, particularly as an artist, looking for beautiful ways to represent my turf.

The lake bottom has treasures, whether it is aluminum cans for my friend’s Hawaii fund, Indian grinding holes, or an occasional blue marble or oyster shell (mysterious finds, indeed). Don’t forget, it also has beautiful views, lots of birds, and a few wildflowers too.

Tulare County’s main industry is agriculture. We feed the world, producing more food than any other place in the country (except Fresno County, because we trade off with them to be king). 

Kaweah Lake was built as water storage for agriculture (but flood control was its primary purpose).

What is this thing??
Disc Golf Association? A frisbee golf course!
Sometimes there are surprising peeks at beautiful views.

Tulare County has Sequoia National Park, a major recreational destination.

Kaweah Lake is a countywide draw for those who love to recreate on water.

Where in your life are you overlooking beauty, history, treasures, and recreational opportunities right under your nose, because it seems meh, boring, cruddy, and beneath you?

Field Trip

Last Sunday afternoon, we drove down to Lake Kaweah to go walking among the cockleburs. I think the dam was built in 1962 or ’63, so I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. 

It is sort of ugly, but interesting at the same time. There are nicer places to walk in Three Rivers, but variety is a good thing. Keeps you and your brain from settling into a rut, something my paternal grandmother preferred to call a “groove”, which she said made for smoother travel.

There are old home sites and even a former swimming pool. A metal detector might yield some interesting results.

pool tile and cockleburs

The bridge is interesting with its styling in the concrete. It crosses Horse Creek.

We followed Horse Creek for awhile. Not much to it, but it became messy, so we went back to the road and followed it into a flock of red-wing blackbirds. Raucous critters. The mallards and snowy egrets are quieter. We encountered another bridge across Horse Creek and headed back. The flower is mustard.This was a field trip just for fun, not for work. I don’t think there is anything pretty enough down there to paint, although a view of Alta Peak and Moro Rock with the lake in the foreground might appeal to a few folks. Minus the cockleburs. . .

An Afternoon and Evening at The Lake

Growing up in Tulare County we simply referred to Lake Kaweah, created by Terminus Dam, as “The Lake”.

Kaweah Lake

(and there is still a stupid dark spot on the lens.)

Now that I’ve lived in Lemon Cove (at the base of the dam) and Three Rivers (on the rivers that flow to The Lake), I’ve learned that it is The Lake. Not “Kaweah Lake”, (pronounced “Kuh-WEE-uh”, not the River Kwai!) but The Lake.

Kaweah Lake

At this time of year, there is a lot of real estate at The Lake bottom for camping, walking, biking, and horseback riding.

Kaweah Lake

Our very dear friends, whom I shall call “Cowboy Bert and The Captain”, have horses. They brought them to The Lake and camped and rode for several days. I’d show you a photo but the only one I have shows The Captain bending over to inspect Blue Doc’s feet, and I don’t show photos of friends bending over. Makes you want to be friends with me, hunh?

Kaweah Lake at dusk

We joined them  for dinner on 2 evenings – we really know how to whoop it up on New Year’s Eve! Ummmm, not.

Kaweah Lake

Going places, even in my own town of Three Rivers, provides inspiration. IF I were painting these days, which I am not unless it is a commissioned piece, I’d probably paint one of the top 2 scenes (minus the weird spot on the lens).

Which is your favorite photo? (and please disregard the weird spot)