Compared to Mineral King, Hume Lake is a city. It is a city with some subdivisions I didn’t know about, in spite of having spent 1-1/2 summers living and working there, along with a handful of days each year for the past 7 summers. It is a growing city.
Let’s ease into our Hume Lake photos with a wild blue flax photo.
Instead of small rustic cabins that house 12 girls, with a little outdoor trek to a bathroom, THIS GIANT BUILDING holds 8 “cabins”, each housing 12 girls, each “cabin” with its own fancy bathroom. THIS IS NOT CAMPING, PEOPLE! Well, staying in rustic cabins wasn’t exactly camping either, but holy guacamole! I counted 6 of these buildings, and that was just for the girls. I didn’t see where the boys stay. Maybe they have all those rustic little cabins that used to be for the girls. I had no idea this section was at Hume.
There is even a skate park, which wasn’t quite set up yet. Skateboarding at summer camp in the mountains wasn’t even an inkling of an idea when I used to love summer camp (not at Hume—there was another camp in my life.)
This is all too much for my simple old-fashioned self to take in. Let’s just take a walk around the lake, shall we?
Hume’s geography always confuses me because the dam drains to the east instead of to the west.
Do I show you the same photos every year? I am always amazed by the abundance of the wild iris, love to walk around the lake, love to see the other wildflowers, and see the dam.
This year my feet have betrayed me, so I am thankful to have gotten in one walk. The rest of the time was spent hanging out at the cabin. I’ll show you some of that Monday.
A friend from childhood inherited a cabin at Hume Lake. In 2018, she invited me to join her and another friend for several days. We had such a wonderful time together that she has invited me back each summer since.
Every time I go, I choose a different route to get there. My favorite is to go through Sequoia, then take Ten-Mile Road to Hume. Some years the road has been closed, so I take my second favorite route, which is Dry Creek Road to Hogback to 245. This year 245 is closed.
So, this year I went through the Park both directions, in spite of road construction below Giant Forest and some logging activities in the Forest Service stretch.
There were beautiful wildflowers and flowing water. Even the dogwood was still in bloom, but the flowers were never near a turnout. My destination was Hume Lake, so I didn’t pursue the flowers.
Let’s take a tour.
This is the middle fork of the Kaweah River with Moro Rock appearing to tower higher than Alta Peak. It’s an illusion. Might make a nice painting, doncha think?
When I was a kid, the road went beneath Tunnel Rock. No mas. I could paint this, but not sure anyone would care.
Through the windshield is never an ideal way to take photos. But, this is another triumph of hope over experience. I could paint from this inferior photo.
If I was still using a film camera, I would declare this shot of the Sentinel Tree a waste of film. However, I could paint from this.
I photographed the Marble Fork bridge last fall when the water was almost nil. This would make a nicer painting.
Not painting this. Since 2015, there have been 3 devastating wildfires in Sequoia and Kings Canyon. I’ve lost track of which fire wrecked which areas.
Ten-Mile Road was a mess last year. This year it is a dream—a skateboarder would have loved the beautiful asphalt. Asphalt isn’t a subject that interests me for painting. Prolly doesn’t interest you either.
We have reached our destination! I could paint this, but it isn’t in Tulare County, and I’m unsure of my market having an interest.
Hume Lake
Monday I’ll show you some photos of my time at Hume.
There was a fair amount of puttering, cabin maintenance, hanging out with neighbors, a few short walks, and some painting on my most recent stay in Mineral King.
Because I needed to complete two more paintings of the iconic scene of the Crowley family cabin with the stream and Farewell Gap, I spent some time studying the water and a few details that often elude me. Customers don’t care or notice, but if I can’t get it right after painting the scene well over 60 times, then I am a little concerned for my own ability to pay attention.
Classic Mineral King
The snow was holding on the peaks and passes. We strolled up the valley toward Crystal Creek.
Crystal is very wide, but easy to cross, especially if you do it my way, which is to just walk right through.
Chihuahua Creek was running strong. This is a seasonal creek that races down the pack station road most years. The trail crew put in a very effective water bar last fall, so now the mud on the road is due to seepage, rather than an errant stream.
Speaking of the pack station, someone asked me about it last week. The short version is that the last concession packers in Mineral King got sideways with the Park, there were lawsuits, and then silence. It was a long time ago (15 years? 20?) No more horse rentals. Now the Park brings up stock as needed to resupply trail crews or just to get the critters out of the heat. They have a tack shed, and there are two abandoned buildings from the previous packer. That’s all I know.
In addition to studying the water at the bridge, I photographed the trees on either side of the Honeymoon Cabin, a mini-museum maintained by the Mineral King Preservation Society. The cabin is the second most popular subject that I paint of Mineral King, so it behooves me to know the details.
Juniper
I took a short walk up to Spring Creek. There is a very appealing curve in the stream below, but I will have to do some rearranging in order for it to make a nice painting.
The bridge was not in, but on the way home on Monday, June 3, we passed a couple of Park guys on their way up to place the bridge.
We took a stroll one evening to enjoy the late light, cool temperatures, beautiful views, and quiet.
On the way down, we encountered this:
Ken wore a hat that read, “Dirty Hands, Clean Money”.
The road has great wildflowers, lots of dirt sections, and is quite passable. BUT, you should be prepared to wait, and be prepared to meet 10-wheelers and other construction vehicles.
I learned so many interesting things in Texas about the culture, history, and of course, wildflowers. Here is more, this time in list form. There is even more I could add, but I expect you have a life. Much of it appeared in my Texas travelogue posts: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six.
COWHIDES IN THE GROCERY STORE?? Yeppers. (The grocery store, called H E B, was ENORMOUS, of course.)
2. Prepping for and laying sod is an enormous amount of labor. Now I know how to do this.
3. Ever seen a 3-D printer? Fascinating. It uses coils of plastic, much like what is in a weed-eater, and follows a preset program.
In about 1-1/2 hours you can have this little item in your hand. (A plastic shark wasn’t what I had pictured for a souvenir of my time in Texas!)
4. Harvester ants are really interesting—their “hill” is huge, and they wear paths in the soil in their labors. They are red and bite, but not nearly as bad as fire ants.
5. This poor photo is of a castle, built next door to friends of my friends. You can read about it here: Unknown Castle.
6. Gas was so much cheaper! (It’s hitting $6/gallon in Three Rivers now.)
7. The speed limit on the freeway was 75. Is it that high in California? If I went anywhere besides Visalia or Exeter, I might know the answer.
8. These are the funniest squishy Tupperware containers I’ve ever seen. N was surprised by my ignorance; I reminded her that we attended a Tupperware party together in the 1980s and told her I hadn’t paid any attention to the stuff since then.
9. Speaking of convenience stores, there is an ENORMOUS truck stop chain in Texas called “Buc-ees“; the mascot is a beaver with buck teeth. It is HUGE. Jee-um asked me how I liked their convenience stores, and of course I replied that everything is bigger in Texas.
10. N and I had fun working our way through a few watercolor exercises in the neatest little book, designed for the purpose of practicing watercolor. (I won’t be switching from oils—it was just for fun.)
11. I relearned how much fun pingpong is.
12. This is the brightest caterpillar I’ve ever seen. I didn’t look it up.
Food
13. I had venison for the first time in many years; also had brisket, which is meat cooked for a very long time; they call it BBQ if it has red sauce on it, the kind that is sort of sweet, which we call “bottled BBQ sauce” around here.
14. My friends (with the sod project) asked me if I liked queso. I said, “Well, that’s Español for cheese, and I love cheese.” Wrong answer. It is a cheesy dip for tortilla chips, just downright scary good.
15. Instead of root beer floats, they often serve Dr. Pepper floats, because Dr. Pepper was invented in Waco.
16. I ate something exceedingly good called “Texican Tamale”. It was at a restaurant called “Mickey B’s”, which apparently is where Randy Travis likes to hang out.
17. Boiled peanuts do NOT sound appetizing, but they are pretty common fare in Texas convenience stores.
18. Finally, I learned how very dear my Texas friends are to me. Travel is such a series of inconveniences, and as I was fixin’ to go, I questioned why I thought it was even necessary, or if it would be worth all the trouble.
It was.
P.S. The seller of the Texas mug refunded my money and then sent me a replacement. Yikes, it is ugly (offends my inner color junkie) and I don’t want it!
The blue on the Texas is faded and pink looks so wrong.The blue is beautiful and perfect with the interior of the mug.
This month I will publish two Learned posts, this one and a Learned in Texas. I shared several things in my little series on being in Texas but there is still more.
1. If you want to search for a term on a website, on a Mac you can use the command key (clover leaf) with F and you get a search box at the upper right corner of the page.
2. Locks of Love takes hair donations to make wigs for kids and charges the kids. Wigs for Kids takes hair donations and doesn’t charge the kids. Wigs for Kids (I don’t know how they handle gray hair.)
3. Northern Lights! In Washington, Three Rivers, and even in Texas! I didn’t see them anywhere, but CK graciously shared her photo with me.
4. I should have known better than to succumb to the temptation of a Texas souvenir in the form of a fragile item. I wanted to replace a broken favorite mug with one of a similar size (15-16 oz.) and found this on Etsy. I mistakenly thought that this fragile item would be packaged in a manner that it wouldn’t arrive in pieces. Alas, I was disappointed. At least I didn’t have to fight for a refund.
5. I finally learned to recognize the difference between Eastern redbud and Western redbud.
Eastern redbud on the left; Western redbud on the right
6. ALWAYS save your postal receipt with a tracking number if you have to return something for a refund. Companies are so eager to sell to you, offering “full money-back guarantees”, but if you can’t prove that you returned it, they will balk. Never mind the fact that it arrived at their warehouse—PROVE IT, YOU SUCKER CUSTOMER. And if you order something with that guarantee, call the customer service number to see if it actually works while you still have time to cancel the order. Some places don’t answer the phone if they even have a number to call; many don’t reply to emails or to the contact form on their websites.
7. I had never seen a fossil, somehow missing all the elementary and secondary lessons on the topic. My good friend Jee-um (that’s how “Jim” is pronounced in Texas), a retired geology teacher, sent me one after he learned of my educational deficit! This is an echinoid, but it looks like a miniature starfish to me.
8. “Functional medicine” is a new term to me—it is a way of practicing medicine that gets to the root of the problem rather than just prescribing something to mitigate the symptoms. A friend told me about this, so I looked it up, as one does. The friend told me that there are practitioners in the area, so I looked that up too. Alas, it took me to the chiropractor I already saw, the very one who tried to sell me a $3500 package of all sorts of things that might or might not treat my neuropathy. Sigh. The saga continues. . .
Did these shoes wreck my feet back in the ’70s and ’80s?
9. No matter how certain I am that a painting is finished, there is ALWAYS room for improvement.
Tomorrow: Eighteen Things I Learned in Texas (Yes, EIGHTEEN, and that doesn’t include all of the things I told you about in my six Texas travelogue posts.
These photos are simply things on my property that I thought you might appreciate. Sometimes it is more enjoyable to look at cats and flowers than to watch paint dry.
This honeysuckle grows on the side of my studio and smells heavenly when the door is open. (Stop scratching your screen!)
I sowed some poppy seeds with an expired date on the package. So far two have been white, or perhaps cream or light yellow.
Jackson doesn’t care about the late season brodiaea but seems to be entranced by something that he might want to kill. This variety is called elegant brodiaea.
The piecemeal fence in the herb garden has needed paint for a couple of years. If I had done it earlier in the season, I would have been able to reach all the parts that are currently covered by growth.
Oh well, it is better than before, as long as the plants hide the unpainted portions
Oh no! I took you right back into watching paint dry!
On the drive up the hill, I was just astonished by the abundance of yellow flowers, particularly bush poppies, covering the areas that burned in 2021. There were also blazing stars, common madia, flannel bush, and monkey flowers, all yellow. There were some other colors too, but yellow dominated.
This is actually looking back downhill.
I have been working on a painting of a scene, incorporating every cabin below Timber Gap and Empire’s outcropping, in spite of there being no actual place to see everything at once. So, this was a good opportunity to really observe each cabin before all the foliage had leafed out.
I spent several sessions standing in various locations, sketching how each cabin might look in relation to its neighbors.
But I bet you didn’t come to this post to see me go on about my work.
View looking uphill from Lookout Point. The tip of Sawtooth is barely visible, but you can see that Sawtooth is still snow-covered.
Farewell Gap is also very snow-covered.
This is the stream by the Honeymoon Cabin.
The Nature Trail has some snow drifts.
The Spring Creek bridge is not in, but someone went snooping around and found a metal plank and placed it below where the stream divides.
The Mineral King road is still under construction with a fluctuating schedule of closures. As soon as I think I know when it will be open and when it will be closed, the schedule gets rearranged. There were many pieces of equipment parked along the shoulders (such as “shoulders” exist on this road), many piles of dirt, and many places of dropping down to gravel where sections will be repaved. But compared to last summer, it isn’t scary.
N and I planned my visit to Texas around when she thought the bluebonnets would be in bloom. When she said the end of April, I thought, “Wow, that wildflower season is later than in Central California”. I was glad that it was later, because it meant I would be in Three Rivers through most of our green season and the wildflowers.
Alas, the bluebonnets peaked at the end of March. While I was disappointed, I couldn’t throw it all together to move my visit to a sooner date. I adjusted my expectations downward, knowing the main point of the trip was to see my friends.
Was I ever surprised by the greenery and the wildflowers!
There were bluebonnets, just not entire fields.
Winecups, in the poppy family. I also found a deep purple version but my photos were blurry.
I could go on and on about these wildflowers, but maybe you’re about Texased out. I might could* do another post, Things I Learned in Texas. I might oughta* do one. I might even be *fixin’ to do that.
