In 2023, I participated in exactly one art boutique/fair/bazaar. ONE. It was in Exeter on a Saturday at the history museum/art gallery, CACHE. This was the inaugural event, the reviews are mixed, and I am guessing it won’t become an annual event.
However, I had a good day! One painting sold (Citrus Row) and many smaller items too, all adding up to YES IT WAS WORTH IT.
Being sort of accidentally semi-retired this year*, I decided that a good day of work deserved a good day of hanging out with friends. Because I still live in the same area where I was reared (children are reared, vegetables are raised), when long-time friends return to the area, they often request a get-together. This isn’t always practical, but it is usually a real treat.
I left the house at 10:30 AM and got home at 5:30 PM, just to “go have lunch”. This is why I often turn down such requests, unless I have recently had a good day of work and don’t have any looming deadlines.
The drive was interesting (I actually left Tulare County!), the company stellar, and lunch was delicious.
Our post-lunch walk was exactly up my alley.
The dead tree was interesting, but I won’t paint it.
I will probably paint this. If I really squint, I can see the mountains. We were too far north to be looking at Alta Peak.
I will paint this, minus the white spots (whitewash against thrip?) and pokey little twigs. I’ll probably fake in a navel.
My friend had to help me with these: pistachios! She said that the crop was left to fall on the ground this year. What a terrible waste.
Of course I will be painting a version of this. Shall I make the hill green?
Two outings: one work, one semi-work related, both social, one closer but more taxing (talking to people all day makes me tired), the other far but entirely up my alley with 2 close and long-time friends in the country surrounded by foothills and oranges.
“The Best View”, 10×20″, $400, currently my favorite subject matter
*Because I had no work this summer I may have forgotten how to work.
A week or two ago, I had some time to kill in Exeter. (That is an unpleasant metaphor—forgive me!)
So, I went for a walk. We think we know a place because we drive through it, but walking is the best way to really take in our surroundings. It’s also a good way to find new ideas for drawing or painting. These aren’t necessarily subjects that will sell, but they will be useful to my drawing students who are learning to accurately see shapes, proportions, perspective, values (darks and lights), and textures.
First, I passed a park that someone once told me was called “Spit & Whittle”. However, there were no benches for old guys to sit on, so maybe I had the wrong park. However, I saw this curious structure, imminently drawable in my view.
I walked along a basic neighborhood street. The yards all had little lawns in front, some green, some unwatered, and only one lawn-parker. I wanted to relandscape, but no one requested my opinion. So, I just admired the view of Rocky Hill.
And of course there were some trains. Exeter is a little catty-wompus on a map because it was built around railroads, which follow the shortest route rather than an exact N-S-E-W grid.
From downtown, there is a view of Alta Peak. There are also American flags, Christmas decorations, fall color in some trees, and markers in the middle of the street, warning against parking on an upcoming evening because of the Christmas parade.
Then I felt compelled to visit the building where my studio used to be. I paid for that brick step, so sometimes I like to just visit it.
It was a real privilege to be located in the building of the poppy mural.
And sometimes I miss being there in the heart of such a great little town, sharing space with a terrific gift shop (Rosemary & Thyme), enjoying the patio outside.
On my way to retrieve the pick-’em-up truck with its new tires, I passed this building. The details on older buildings are so charming, and always strike me as good subjects to practice drawing or painting. Bricks aren’t easy, nor is shrubbery but when one is learning to draw, it’s all hard.
Then it was time to go to the Courthouse GalleryCACHE to teach the final drawing lessons of 2023.
I love to teach people how to draw, love my drawing students, love this location in this little town that I also love.
Aw shucks, isn’t that just sweet?
And remember tomorrow, the little holiday gift bazaar at CACHE, from 10-4.
Trail Guy and I like to explore the bottom of Lake Kaweah when the water is low. It’s a good place to ride bikes, ride horses, walk, or walk dogs, not pretty like the BLM land above our house, but spacious and easy to get to.
It changes each season, depending on water flow, rain, water releases, etc. The floods deposited an enormous amount of silt, sand, and rocks, all in layers. We saw this last January before the lake started filling.
In past years, the Army Corps of Engineers has cleared the roads at the lake bottom, but this year it was too difficult. Or something. There must be some reasons, but from my ignorant point of view, I see all that material as useful for repairing all the ruined roads in Tulare County. Apparently not.
We spent an hour or so walking on the sand and dried mud to see how things might be this winter for walking and biking.
The cockleburrs survive no matter what. And Slick Rock isn’t looking too slick.
Lake Kaweah wasn’t a lake until I was about 4 years old, and it has been going through transformations ever since Terminus Dam was built.
Release, pencil drawing, matted and framed to 20×28″, $495
Lake Kaweah is weirdly fascinating, not exactly pretty, but always interesting. (Maybe next time I will remember to take a bag for trash.)
I went to Sequoia National Park twice in October because this place attracts people from all over the world, and it is ONLY ONE HOUR FROM THREE RIVERS!! I don’t go very often because we go to Mineral King, another fabulous part of Sequoia. But when Mineral King isn’t accessible, why not go to the main part of “The Park”, as we refer to it here in Three Rivers?
On Saturday, October 28, I was supposed to go to the Native Voices exhibit unveiling at the Three Rivers History Museum, but this lovely opportunity presented itself. (Besides I thought there would be too many people at the museum.)
Trail Guy and I headed up the Generals Highway with The Farmer and Hiking Buddy. Because we were with other people, I didn’t keep calling for a pullover to take photos even though the dogwood were really getting their fall colors. I have enough photos. (Maybe.)
Climbing Moro Rock is unmatchable in its awesomeness. There is this little nagging thing in the back of my mind that says one day either my feet won’t let this happen any more or The Park will decide that it isn’t safe and just shut it down. That would be tragic.
This time I didn’t take any pictures on the way up. (There were too many people.) What I find surprising is that each time I go, it feels unfamiliar, as in, “I don’t remember this stretch of steps”.
The smoke from the fires in Redwood Canyon was much stronger than 2 weeks previous.
Sawtooth is visible from the top of Moro Rock but none of the signs on the route up Moro Rock naming the peaks go that far south.
A week or so earlier, I learned about the Marble Fork bridge, just beyond Lodgepole. I’d seen it many times, but never paid attention because the Clover Creek bridge is bigger and more noticeable. The Marble Fork bridge has lots of parking, picnic tables, and easy access to the water, but not too many people. Why don’t more people stop here? Because it isn’t highly publicized or signed. Look at this fabulous piece of rock construction:
Look at this little fire tipi; there were several, because the Park has been doing mechanical thinning.
We drove to Wuksachi, with the intent to explore some of the trails around the large area. This was developed in the early ’90s to take pressure off Giant Forest; there are still at least as many people in Giant Forest. It has the museum, big parking lot, the Moro Rock/Crescent Road and all are the first area you come to that feels as if you have arrived.
Wuksachi had tremendous plans for expansion. More lodging, perhaps some little cabins were planned, but nothing has come to fruition. It has three sort of Motel-6-ish units, and a giant lodge (why “lodge” when there are no places to stay in that building?) with a gift shop, lounge area, bar, and restaurant with giant windows and a fireplace.
Wuksachi doesn’t have any redwood trees, and a lot of the area around has been burned. It has many meandering trails, lots of rustic bridges, and it connects to a trail that leads to Lodgepole or Twin Lakes. I’d never been on those trails, and didn’t know Clover Creek ran nearby, nor that you can walk to Lodgepole from Wuksachi. (We didn’t.) This bridge caught my eye because it looks as if it has been there for awhile, rather than the new (from the 1990s) ones throughout Wuksachi’s grounds.
Looking downstream from the bridge, I saw berries that were new to me.
They looked like pyracantha berries and tasted incredibly foul. (No, I didn’t eat one—just put my teeth in one briefly to see what it was like.)
Instead of eating at Wuksachi’s Pizza Deck as planned (too many people), we ate our backup picnic lunch on some abandoned and mostly broken picnic tables off in a sunny place. There are lots of large outdoor storage areas, probably intended for parking lots or more lodging, and they definitely didn’t have too many people.
Then we continued exploring on foot, and I was attracted to other bridges. This one was a driving bridge; the light didn’t seem right for good photos on those other footbridges. (I might need to go back again.)
There is still some road construction on the Generals Highway. On the way down we hit a red light beneath some black oaks with a few leaves beginning to turn their golden fall color.
We were hoping to look across the canyon to Admiration Point and then use binoculars to see if the Colony Mill Ranger Station is still standing.
I didn’t take a turn with the binoculars because I saw penstemon in bloom. Penstemon in late October?!
Admiration Point is across the canyon. I haven’t circled it on the photo; just know it is there.
Thus we conclude another day of not painting or drawing. Next week perhaps I will be more productive, artwise. But sometimes an artist needs a few field trips to refill the well.
“. . .Will you still need me, Will you still read me, When I’m sixty-four?”
Because I am now.
Neither Trail Guy nor I had been to the main part of Sequoia National Park since before the fires (2020, 2021) and flood (2022-2023).
I love to climb Moro Rock, so that is how I chose to spend my birthday. The burned parts of the Park looked terrible, but the road is great and the unburned parts are beautiful too.
Enough yammering. Here are some photos.
Some of the dogwood leaves were changing.Normally they don’t color up until the end of October.
Lots of steps to climb
We see Alta Peak from our house in Three Rivers so it is fun to see it closer from Moro Rock.
The red oval is circling two almost invisible plumes of smoke from the current fire at Redwood Canyon.
It looks as if the stairs end here, but if you make a sharp right, they keep on aclimbin’.
On the way up and at the top we heard an English accent, several languages we didn’t recognize, and what I think was Korean. Everyone was polite, helping each other out with photos, moving aside on narrow places.
One last look up.
Crescent Meadow was our next destination.
The road there passes the Parker Group, which is a great source of sequoias to paint, along with Tunnel Log, which I’ve also painted several times.
Tharp’s Log is an interesting spot, just about 1/2 mile from Crescent Meadow. I like seeing the human history in national parks.
It is rare to see the needles from a redwood/sequoia tree because they are usually so high up in the sky that you can’t tell what they look like. This time I kept my eyes open for a baby redwood, and voila! here it is. The needles look fluffy compared to pines, firs, and cedars. (They aren’t.)
I took this through the windshield on the way home when traffic stopped. Four Guardsmen is often a traffic stopper. Apparently people forget how to drive when they are in a national park.
The day was an experience in nostalgia. Trail Guy used to be Road Guy, with 37 years of working for Sequoia. Things now look different, because things are done differently than when he retired 11 years ago. Some are an improvement, and some in the category of Are You Kidding??
It was also a day of comparison. Seemed like Moro Rock’s steps were a bit steeper than remembered, and the handrail seemed a bit lower. The Generals Highway was infinitely better than the Mineral King road. The trails were mostly paved and certainly much flatter than in Mineral King. We talked to someone from Germany, someone from Ecuador, and heard many languages that we could not identify. There were lots of people, particularly for a midweek day, AFTER Labor Day.
What a great way to spend a birthday! And, although I wasn’t driving Fernando, it was a business trip because I got a few more photos for painting from.
In conclusion, “Will you still need me, will you still read me, when I’m sixty-four?”
Because I am now. (But not losing my hair—growing it, actually, to save in case I do lose it!)
Perhaps this chapter should be titled “The end of the trip”. I HATE leaving places, whether it is home, or a place I have visited. Am I like Lot’s wife, looking back longingly, lingering in the past? Maybe. But with age and experience comes wisdom (sometimes), and that means I know looking forward is a better approach.
The perfection of the roses, the lack of deer in the yard. . . happy sigh.
We took one last walk the day I left. Each day we walked, I carried my cell phone to keep track of the distance. I think my phone lies. My sister’s step counter always showed a longer distance, and I assure you that we were going the same distance, and she was not walking circles around me.
The phone came in handy for a few photos, one last time of oohing and ahhing over all the beauty, so different from Three Rivers.
This classic is begging to be drawn.
After stopping at Trader Joe’s (because there isn’t one in Tulare County) and Winco (because otherwise I might have had to stop in Visalia on the way home) and Chevron (because I wanted to drive for 9 hours and had to begin with a full tank), I headed south. Another audio book would take me to a suburb of Sacramento, aiming for the house of a dear friend.
Before crossing back into California, I stopped for gas again. (It takes about 4 tanks to go the distance between my home and my sister’s.) I like Oregon’s luxury of not pumping my own gas and having my windshield washed for me. Alas, this law is about to change.
What I didn’t like was the hideous bug that landed on my arm. I might have squealed a little bit. I heard a woman scream at the next row of gas pumps, and I don’t think it was due to the price of gas or any untoward behavior by the attendant.
When I was safely inside the pick-’em-up truck, I saw the hideous bug on the windshield. Three of them, actually. It was alarming, but I managed to snap a couple of photos while staying in my lane.
Got another glimpse of Mt. Shasta on the way home.
I made my way to my friend’s house, where she provided a fine welcome. We had much to catch up, having been apart by a month, and we stayed up way too late. The following morning, I got up before she did, snuck out of the house, and was on the road before she woke up. It was only a 5 hour drive, and I was a horse heading for the barn (to quote my Very Wise Dad who had a saying for every occasion).
Thus we end our ongoing saga of a Trip to Oregon. Maybe someday I will get to live there. On the other hand, since I hate leaving places and am never moving again, it isn’t likely.
The day before I left Oregon I had an opportunity to draw with some precious little people. Because this is the world wide web, there will be no photos of those folks. We drew together on two different occasions, but I only thought to take a very few photos on the second session.
Before we began drawing together, one of them sent me this picture, full of eagerness and excitement.
She had a mind for drawing like a great big sponge. We discussed things like outlines, leaving paper color for the brightest item in the drawing, and putting on paper exactly what you see. Then we picked a daisy outside, brought it in, and began drawing from real life. Pretty radical change, eh?
One of these precious little people has a real thing for dinosaurs. He drew one for me, then we discussed ways to make the back legs look as if they were in the back. His birthday was soon, so when his attention span was reached, I drew a dinosaur for him. I didn’t photograph the final version because it included a birthday message, and I protect my little people’s privacy from the world wide web.
This little guy drew a house for me, and then we went outside and I showed him how to draw his grandparents’ house by looking at it. He traced my version, then redrew it on his own.
Another little person learned to draw a football player with a normal sized neck instead of as a pencil-necked-geek.
It was oh so very fun that I didn’t take many photos. . . so absorbed in our tasks that I just forgot about documenting things.
There was also an experiment taking place throughout the day, involving more daisies.
Did you ever put celery in a jar of water with red food dye? Flowers are more fun.
We would check the progress periodically. These three precious little people kept experimenting by moving their daisies into different dyes throughout the day.
All good things (nay, all things, whether good or bad) come to an end. My trip was almost over. With those drawing lessons, I suppose it could have been considered a business trip, but alas, only Fernando gets his miles written off, and he was unable to participate in our adventure.
This is Chapter 2, but perhaps it will only have 2 chapters. As usual, more will be revealed in the fullness of time.
Today’s post is just a few random photos of fun times with Sister and family.
We completed a jigsaw puzzle. Normally I consider these to be a waste of time, but in this case, it is something to do while hanging out and catching up.
I took many scraps of yarn and turned them into a scarf/wrap/hoodie article of clothing for a friend. (It is in progress here.)
We took walks through the neighborhood on curvy streets, where I had difficulty maintaining my sense of direction. This was by far and away my favorite yard.
Yucca?? In Oregon?? Yeppers.
I don’t get out much in real life, at least in terms of spending time in cities. We had “coffee”, which means overpriced fancy sweetened caffeinated high-calorie beverages at a spacious and noisy place. Every place seemed to be noisy. As I said, I don’t spend time in cities. They are noisy and peopley, but interesting in small doses.
Look at this alleyway!! Is everything prettier in Oregon? Nope. There was a plethora of street people and closed businesses. Sigh.
But it thrills my little country heart to see beautiful architecture.
This is a place that refurbishes used furniture, makes new pieces from wood, and teaches refugees woodworking skills, along with teaching English. It was spacious and noisy, but it was also full of interesting things for sale. Excellent concept for helping folks.
Here is one of their items:
Finally, this piece of rose perfection is in my sister’s own front yard.
There is a little bit of important Mineral King news at the bottom of this post.
People say that Oregon is green for a reason, but most of my visits have been sunny. This trip was no exception.
It almost causes me physical pain to leave home, but somehow I was able to pull it off. This is about 15 miles from home, looking through the windshield, remembering Lot’s wife and facing forward, looking ahead to the future, trying to be brave about all I was leaving behind. (A trip is a temporary situation, Central California Artist.)
The great Central Valley of California is so beautiful when the air is clear.
This is heading to Reading. Or perhaps, hedding to Redding.
Once past Redding, Mt. Shasta is visible. Anyone out there remember Shasta soda? The logo on the cans looked just like Mt. Shasta. (Duh.)
Truck Village is always something to look forward to. It is near Weed. (Don’t get your knickers in a twist–ABNER WEED was a man’s name!)
There was a long traffic jam before Weed, and I just didn’t want to stop, so I pushed through to Yreka, stopped for gas, and still felt alert. (Ice cream for dinner helped.) I called my sister to ask how long it would take to get to her place from there. The answer was 4-1/2 hours. Remembering that it was the day with the most daylight of the entire year, and I was heading north, I decided to push on. So, a day of 13 hours of driving, almost two books on CDs, some tunes, a little talk radio, some thinking, some praying, 3 or 4 stops for gas (it is expensive everywhere), some snacking (but I refused to pay $4.49 for a “sharing” size of M&Ms—ARE YOU KIDDING ME??), and no night of poor sleep in some motel with the sounds of traffic, car doors, and strangers banging around with suitcases.
Sister and I did lots of walking. It is a thrill to see the beautiful yards (NO DEER! NO DROUGHT!) with many plants I’ve never seen in bloom.
We also went to a couple of estate sales. This one took the cake.
We visited an arboretum and had fun with a plant identification app on the phone (Picture This, free if you can see the almost invisible “CANCEL” in the upper right corner of the screen each time you open it.)
I attended a celebration of life service for a friend who used to live in Three Rivers. This photo was taken through the window of the pick-’em-up truck (Fernando stayed home) while crossing the Columbia River on the border of Oregon and Washington. That’s Mt. Hood. It looks like Shasta, because that’s just how it is with those volcanoes.
We also took an afternoon excursion to McMinnville to a store that specializes in olive oil and balsamic vinegars. I lost control. Phenomenal stuff. (I don’t need no stinkin’ Trader Joe’s!)
To be continued tomorrow. . .
About Mineral King: (CABIN FOLKS, PAY ATTENTION!), the gate code has been changed. CALL AN MKDA BOARD DIRECTOR FOR THE NEW COMBINATION. IT CANNOT BE GIVEN OUT VIA EMAIL, VOICEMAIL OR TEXT.
My sixth annual friend reunion at Hume Lake was a week or two ago (time flies). It was a little odd to go to someone else’s cabin before spending time at my own. It was also the first time we didn’t rent some sort of watercraft, and the first time I actually wore long pants. Summer has been slow in arriving this year in the Sierra Nevada.
The Generals Highway is closed, but I normally don’t go that way. I went my usual route of Dry Creek Road to 245 to Hogback to 245 to 180. This is one of the iconic scenes along the classic foothill road of Dry Creek.
The Park entrance station was very backed up, because going through Kings Canyon is the only route open to Sequoia.
Then I went through Grant Grove and turned toward Hume Lake at the Princess campground by the closed Cedar Grove road. Too bad, because it would be a terrific year to see the big water in the Kings River on the road to Cedar Grove.
Walking around the lake is a tradition. We have always thought it was a 3 mile walk, but the phones (so smart, eh?) tell us 2.5 miles. Ten-mile Creek was roaring as we crossed it on the footbridge. (Incidentally, the road called “Ten-mile” is only 9 miles.)
We got caught in rain walking around the lake the first day.
The dam release was roaring.
The grounds at Hume’s conference center are beautifully landscaped. I flipped over these columbine. We saw a few deer but only away from the main activity areas. People the area get all excited about seeing deer; I try to keep my disgust for the flower-consumers to myself. (Jumped up to respray some geraniums while typing this at home.)
There was a ton of snow on the distant peaks. Hume Lake gets me geographically confused, because it drains to the east.
Here is Ten-mile Creek in sunshine, still rip-roaring along.
Someone got creative with a downed tree below the dam. This walk was after it rained hard so the water is coming over the spillway in addition to the normal release pipes (channels? culverts? tubes?).
Every year I count on seeing wild iris around the lake. There were zillions in the meadow by the Princess campground, but no place to pull over and be a looky-loo.
We took a “back-stage” tour at Hume, where we got an in depth look at the inner workings. The place is self-contained like a city, with its own charter school (under Fresno Unified School District), auto shop, metal fabrication shop, sewage treatment, and fire department. They didn’t disclose the source of their water or discuss garbage, and I was a little short on time because I had to hustle down the hill to teach drawing lessons.
They showed us the ropes course, where apparently there are quite a few come-to-Jesus moments. (I already came to Jesus, so won’t be testing my faith on any of this stuff).
I learned that they bought their own coffee roasting equipment and in 9 months it paid for itself in savings. (I didn’t try any of their coffee because we were self-contained in my friend’s cabin). This is a photo of one of the dining halls. I was gobsmacked, since I served in the former building as the hostess of the dining room in 1978. That building burned down, and this huge elegant multipurpose structure has replaced the one I knew.
Besides walking the lake, there was a craft project. I observed and appreciated the results, but the method doesn’t work on Crocs, so I knitted instead.
The morning I left, it was brilliant, just fabulously brilliant.
This is Ten-mile Creek from the bridge. The Google told me that Ten-mile road was the quickest way to Exeter, along with the same roads I used to get to Hume, but coming down 245 into Woodlake rather than Dry Creek. Such a beautiful drive, if one has air conditioning. Fernando’s A/C still works—thanks for your concern.
If you came here for Mineral King news and are disappointed, you can check the Mineral King website to see if anything new has been posted.
My sixth annual friend reunion at Hume Lake was a week or two ago (time flies). It was a little odd to go to someone else’s cabin before spending time at my own. It was also the first time we didn’t rent some sort of watercraft, and the first time I actually wore long pants. Summer has been slow in arriving this year in the Sierra Nevada.
This walk was after it rained hard so the water is coming over the spillway in addition to the normal release pipes (channels? culverts? tubes?).
The morning I left, it was brilliant, just fabulously brilliant.
