Category: Mineral King

Day Fifteen On The Mural

On the wall, off the wall. Today I painted on the mural but won’t be painting again until the Mural Team says to. This is sort of hard, but I am trying to see the bright side: time to paint in the workshop, draw in the studio, catch up on the computer and maybe even squeeze in a bit of time in Mineral King. The fact that I had planned to have the mural finished by the end of July shouldn’t be a deterrent to finishing other projects – it is the opposite! So, I am happy, so happy. . . today’s theme is Rock On!

Now you can see that the trail reaches the ground. I visited Franklin Lake last week and made a few changes in the rocks on the mural as a result. The visit made me realize that I have taken a few liberties with the trail in relation to the dam. Guess you’ll have to visit the place yourself to verify that! (It’s only 5-1/2 miles – you can do it!)

Mineral King Wildflowers, continued

Have you ever looked for blue flowers at the nursery? They are rare in the domestic world of flowers. Not so in the wild! Here are blue flowers in Mineral King whose names I know:

Languid Ladies aka Sierra Bluebells

Forget-me-nots aka Sierra Stickseed

Blue Lips

Five Spot

Explorer’s Gentian

Wild Blue Flax (with a bug)

Sky Pilot (only seen at Farewell Gap)

Mineral King Wildflowers

I own 4 wildflower books. It isn’t enough. There are so many flowers whose names I can’t find. Why does this matter? Given that man’s first job was to name the animals, perhaps I am just following in the foots of my oldest ancestor! Today, let’s look at white flowers whose names I do know.

morning glory

rein orchis (I know it is weird!)

knot weed (lacy and gorgeous – shouldn’t be called “weed”!)

mariposa lily (with an ant on it)

pennyroyal (just as fragrant as its domestic cousin by the same name)

sierra star tulip

wild geranium (not like the pelargonium we mistakenly call geraniums)

ranger button

cow parsnip

Sharing Mineral King, part 2

On day 2 in Mineral King, S’s younger daughter woke up very excited to go fishing with Michael. She is highly competitive and it is reported that the first words from her mouth that a.m. were “I’m going to smoke that old man!”

“That old man” had to get his fly rod ready for the challenge. (He wasn’t worried.)

The girls used live crickets (gross!) and worms (also gross!)

“That old man” smoked the girls!

Mineral King

Sharing Mineral King

If you have been a follower of this blog for 2 years, you may have read of my good friend S. (Did some painting in her dining room, and called her when I had a huge rattler that I was too weenie to deal with). We made arrangements for S and her 2 daughters to spend a few days with us in Mineral King. (Don’t worry about Mr. S – he was fishing in Alaska!) Wow, I sometimes forget how fun it is to see a newcomer’s excitement! S has been up before, but her daughters were in a state of high enthusiasm for the place. We first visited a waterfall that has a mining tunnel at the base:

The maps call it “Black Wolf” – we call it “Monarch”. Unless you have followed the somewhat sketchy trail to its base, you probably won’t recognize it from this angle.

It was creepy, slimy, dark, wet and cold in the tunnel. Doesn’t that sound inviting? 😎

Saw a wild rose, which isn’t all that common in Mineral King!

We barbecued pizza for dinner and enjoyed it around a warming fire. It is so shocking to want a fire when it is 100+ degrees down the hill!

Exeter California murals Mineral King mural

That Yellow Flower in Mineral King

There is a flower that blooms in profusion in Mineral King. It has been incorrectly called “mule ears”, “arnica” and “sneezeweed”. I know all those, and this isn’t them. It appears to be in the sunflower family and always looks scraggly, even when first in bloom.

I tend to think of it as “oh, that yellow thing”. But look at That Yellow Thing in a group:

Day Fourteen On The Mural

yesterday

TODAY!

Okay, I admit I had a little help from a friend.

Watch for an article in the Visalia Times-Delta about the mural by Teresa Douglass. No date of publication as of yet. . . more will be revealed!

Day Thirteen on the Mural

This is the before and after of today’s painting session:

Doesn’t look as if there is a great deal of real estate to be covered here. Looks can fool you! Because each photo was taken from a different vantage point, I keep getting confused as to which level of rocks, individual rocks, trees and shrubs are coming from which photo!

My back sort of hurts from shoving that boulder over. It is a weird shape now, but my photo has it cut off. I’ll work on a more believable redesign tomorrow, along with finishing all that white space and getting the trail to turn to the left.

Exeter California murals Mineral King mural

New and Improved, Brighter and Better

South facing murals fade the fastest. The Exeter Mural Team has this magic stuff that causes the color to return to its original brightness. I was stunned at the brilliance and the renewed contrast in this mural after they juiced it up!

Exeter California murals Mineral King mural

Day Twelve on the Mural

This week I met several mural team members at The Wall to discuss our options in dealing with our mechanical snags. We formulated a plan, and after they do what they have to do, I’ll be back on the wall. While at the wall, I did a bit of sketching because I was there and the only thing worse than getting up at 5 a.m. is wasting it! It is a little risky, because my historical consultants and I aren’t entirely convinced that this is the original Mt. Whitney Power Co. cabin. It appears as such on the Mineral King Preservation Society website. The question is that it also looks like the type of cabin built by Windy Stevens, about whom I do not have adequate information. . . perhaps he wasn’t around when the Mt. Whitney Power Co. was. Perhaps the MWPC used his plans. More will be revealed (if I am diligent AND lucky!)

First I painted it in green. It was wrong, so I repainted it in brown. (Hard to tell the difference in color here!)

Exeter murals Mineral King Mt. Whitney Power Co.