Are you all rested after the lunch break and ready to make like a cow-pie and hit the trail again? (Never mind. We weren’t on a trail yet.) After our lunch break among the yellow unknowns, we crossed a little spring or drainage, a wet place that I named Everything Spring. Every possible wildflower was […]
A Long Walk in Mineral King, Part 1
Actually, it was a hike. We went to White Chief, over the ridge to the Farewell Gap drainage, down to the snow survey site, crossed the stream on a snowfield, found our way to the Farewell/Franklin Trail, and then 4 miles back to the cabin. This post is getting too long, kind of like the […]
Short Mineral King Walk
There is a trail in Mineral King called “The Nature Trail”, a one mile route that connects Cold Springs Campground (near the Ranger Station) to the Mineral King valley itself. There was a meeting in the area near Cold Springs Campground, and I took the Zapato Express*, choosing to go down the trail instead of […]
A Walk to Eagle Meadow
I split a lot of firewood, and have learned how to read the wood to work with the knots. Knots are just branches, but I have never seen inside a hollow tree before to see the entire branch, or what the end of a knot looks like. There weren’t as many flowers as we expected […]
Timber Gap
On July 4, Trail Guy and I hiked to Timber Gap. The flowers were early, but abundant, and the gap still had snow. We met a couple of hardy backpackers who planned a long trip in a short number of days. Then we took the old wagon road out of Timber Gap, and traversed the […]
Mineral King Wildflowers
Mineral King Wildflowers is the name of the book I published in March of this year. In it, I said that most of the wildflowers in Mineral King hit their peak in July. This year it might be even truer, because the June flowers are still blooming in July. But perhaps the July flowers will […]
Mineral King Wildflowers Book
Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names arrived yesterday! The price is $19.78, which includes sales tax. The odd number is because 1978 is the year that Mineral King became part of Sequoia National Park. If you order from my website, I’ll pay the shipping. If you order from Amazon, they will charge an additional $3.99.
Wildflower Book Update
Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names This is the title of my next book. “My next book” – What? do you think you are an author? Well, I make books, so maybe I am an author. My books are picture books, so maybe I am an artist who makes books. “Maybe”? Sigh. It is hard to talk about oneself and […]
Work That Doesn’t Feel Like Work
In my normally slow month of December, I finally had the chance to work on my upcoming book Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names. It seems to be cooking along just fine, and then something goes wackadoodle with InDesign or the template ceases to do its templatish magic or it takes hours and hours to resize all […]
Trail Guy’s Favorite Mineral King Hike
Sometimes I have to be down the hill, feeding Samson, watering the yard, blogging, drawing, taking care of business, fulfilling promises. Meanwhile, Trail Guy the Retiree is in Mineral King, hiking and taking photos for me to put on my blog. His favorite place to go is White Chief. Mine too, unless it is the […]