Cabin Time at Hume Lake

This is a cabin. It’s a real cabin, not a fancy house in the mountains.

This is a pair of socks on the needles. Instead of spending hours walking around the lake, I got in some knitting.
My friend has a quirky sense of humor. This is in her front yard.

We didn’t just sit around the cabin. We had to figure out why the BBQ wouldn’t light and why it smelled so strongly of propane that the Hume Lake Fire Department showed up at 11:30 one night, sniffing around to find the problem. The next day, two of us spent a couple of hours cleaning the BBQ, then refilled the tank, which solved all the problems.

And we did walk down to the lake a few times. The grass was newly planted, just irresistible.

Summer camps for kids hadn’t yet begun, so the whole place was very calm and quiet.

Even the office has tremendous curb appeal. The entire place is well-maintained, landscaped, and ultra-friendly. (And it has electricity, working telephones, wifi at some of the private cabins, paved roads, and a fire department.) It isn’t Mineral King, but it has its own appeal, and still retains common cabin community characteristics.

The route home went back through Sequoia National Forest and Sequoia National Park. I left early enough to not have to deal with a ton of traffic, except for hoards heading up the hill once I was past Giant Forest. These are two attempts to get photos for painting.

OF COURSE I won’t paint in the speed limit sign. But I think the light on this tree was worth a quick stop.

Tomorrow we will return to watching paint land on canvases.

Short Tour of Hume Lake

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.

Hume Lake Annual Reunion

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.

 

Hume Lake Instead of Mineral King

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Every summer for the past handful of years, I have had the privilege of joining a friend from childhood at her Hume Lake cabin. She brings 2 other friends with her, and now they are part of the fun that I look forward to each summer. This is a different part of the Sierra than our other home in Mineral King, and it is more than just a geographical difference: the cultural differences are stark. This is not a good/bad situation; it is simply a different situation. 

We walk around the lake (3 miles on a well-used trail), rent a water something (rowboat, stand-up paddle board, kayak, canoe), walk among the fancy mountain houses (I can’t really think of these beautiful homes as “cabins”, part of the stark contrast to Mineral King), hear excellent speakers (a Christian camp with good chapel services), reunite with my friend’s cousins (now my friends too), eat too much, laugh until I fall down, talk late into the night, and sleep too little.

The journey this year had this dismal landscape for part of the trip.

The lake and all of Hume escaped last year’s conflagration.

On Saturday evenings after the campers have left, some of the staff race to the end of the dock and fling themselves into the lake. It looks different at different times of day, always picturesque. The dam which creates the lake is highly unusual. It was built in 1908, and the lake was created for transporting logs. My favorite part of the trail is below the dam where it is green green green. Or wait—is my favorite part of the trail where the wild iris bloom?

Or maybe it is at the beginning of the trail. I like the view from the bridge that crosses Ten Mile Creek. We like to walk to the top of the hill, and were blown away by the potential lumber. These folks believe in mechanical thinning, in managing their forest. Could this be why they have escaped the wildfires through the years? The view from Inspiration Point was somewhat obstructed by clouds this year.  And finally, this year our visit coincided with the elusive and magical red mariposa lily! (My friends may have been concerned for my mental balance when I insisted that we look for it, amazed that I spotted it, and puzzled by my enthusiasm, but one of them took this photo for me.)

Not Mineral King Mountains

Last week I had the privilege of spending several days at Hume Lake with my friend and a new friend at my friend’s cabin. (Friend friend friend – just wrecked that word for myself.)

This is the 4th summer that she has invited me to join her, and through the times spent together, I have come to know and love her cousins, gotten reacquainted with Hume (worked there the summer of ’78), and become quite close with my old friend from childhood. 

Rather than go into a bunch of personal blah blah blah, let’s do our usual thing with photos.

Look on the lamp table. There is my oil painting, cleverly titled “Hume Lake I”.
“Hume Lake II” was very well received, as was “Hume Lake III”. (Most of the birthday party attendees began shouting their birth dates at me.)
So calm in the evening.
Wild Azaleas were in bloom.
Because there were no campers around, we got to go places that are usually not open to cabin folks.
One of the places that we explored was the children’s camp called “Wagon Train”.
Instead of cabins, the kids sleep in these covered Conestoga wagon replicas.
The lake was so serene without the hundreds of camping kids present. This is sad, unless you view it as a temporary condition.
This wildflower is new to me. I don’t have to know the name because it isn’t in Mineral King.
We ate way too much, so I force-marched my companions around the lake one evening after dinner. One of them had a Fit-Bit that recorded 26,400 steps that day. (Those steps didn’t counteract all the ice cream,)
I went to Inspiration Point in search of a red Mariposa Lily. Guess I was too early this year, because all I found were Farewell-to-Spring and profusely blooming Bear Clover.
I drove home a different route and saw Hume from an overlook. 

There are so many options for coming and going, unlike Mineral King with one road in and out. Hume Lake also has electricity, wifi in some cabins, many many cabins, and provided the best summer of my life (1978) until I worked in the Mineral King area (Silver City Store) in 1985. (And I thought that BEFORE I met Trail Guy at the end of that summer, so there.)

We had the pleasure of witnessing the baptism in the lake of 3 terrific kids.

Another distinct pleasure was renting stand-up paddle boards. We almost opted out, but I remembered our decision last year that we would do this, combined with the fact that the day was hot, there wasn’t much traffic on the lake, and that “everyone” knows that people regret what they don’t do more than what they do. (My sister and I often remind one another to “Do It Anyway”, in spite of our reservations, fears and doubts.) It was great fun, and I didn’t fall, but I would like to learn how to paddle without the zig-zag effect, which greatly impedes forward progress.

Oh – ice cream. Did I mention ice cream?

Someone needs to cut off my end of the table.

P.S. I have FOURTEEN books on hold at the library. WHEN WILL THEY OPEN AGAIN??

 

 

Slow Start

An idea came to me about painting again. Start slow, and do three paintings for an upcoming situation. (If it is interesting enough, I’ll tell you about it next week.)

First step is to choose the photos. I thought I’d paint all three alike but then couldn’t decide which version.
Putting on the hanging hardware and titling the pieces is a step I’ve known other artists to skip. Not this little gray duck – titles are important for identification and inventory purposes, and hanging hardware makes it much easier on the recipient of the painting.
That’s enough for starters.

I started these paintings using the method taught by Laurel Daniel last year in her three day plein air painting workshop in Georgia. I will follow her method until the real me takes over and I put in details, drawing with my paintbrush.

A Funny Walk at Hume

There is a funny walk at Hume, which most of the residents call a “hike”, but this ain’t Mineral King, folks. (What a snob I am!)

The walk is best enjoyed in photos. Let’s go!

I believe this qualifies as a Peculiar Sight.

Hume Lake Wildflowers

Say what? “Hume Lake wildflowers”, I said! It is still the Sierra, and I love wildflowers, as you know. And sometimes I go to the mountains in places that aren’t Mineral King. It’s permissible.

I stayed with my old friend at her cabin. It was charming, and it has electricity and even a teevee with a DVD player! There are 2 cabins nearby where her cousins are, including my new friends from Georgia. But I came here to tell you about wildflowers today.


There were many wild iris. (Mineral King only has them in one spot, a place I am not telling anyone about, which you would know if you have read Mineral King Wildflowers.)
This variety of penstemon is in my top 10 of wildflower favorites.
WHAT IS THIS???

There we were, just walking along a road above Hume Lake, when I almost got whiplash, or flew over the handlebars, or went a little nutso. Lots of Mariposa Lilies, and then BOOM!

RED MARIPOSA LILIES!! NEVER HEARD OF THEM BEFORE, NEVER SEEN THEM, NEVER WILL FORGET THIS!

That was completely thrilling! The Mariposa Lily that I know is on the title page of the white chapter in my book. When I got home to my books, I found 2 mentions of a different type of Mariposa Lily that occasionally comes in red or purple, but no photos, and I had to read to the bottom of a couple of boring descriptions to find them. (I hope my book isn’t boring to you.)

100 page paperback, flowers in photos, common names only, lots of chatty commentary, $20 including tax.
Available here
Also available at the Three Rivers Historical Museum, Silver City Store, from me if I put them in my car, or Amazon.