Beasore meadows Sierra Mountains

From a hill near my home.

It's difficult to spend the effort to post here when so few read this blog but I still think the media holds merit. So here is another photography post mainly because most of my creative efforts have been with photography.

A week ago I joined a local plein air painting group on a trip to Beasore meadows in the Sierra Mountains. Being summer here in California we rarely get many clouds but this particular day started off with a great cloudy sunrise. Being summer we didn't expect it to rain but wouldn't you know the one day we plan to paint outside it does?

The group consisted of 7 women and me. I thought for sure they would call it off but we all kept thinking the drizzle would let up and make for perfect conditions. So we made the long trek up into the high country.

This is an area I'm not that familiar with and was looking forward to seeing it. Our guide knew the area quite well and took us to a beautiful secluded meadow hidden behind tall trees. The trail had been blocked by a few fallen trees but it was a short hike that led us to a gate then to an wooden observation deck. I have to say I was quite surprised to see this nice of a deck in such a secluded spot. There were lots of purple asters, and various other wild flowers like the almost done lupine you see here. Since it was still drizzling we decided to venture on to another spot she had picked out and hope the rain would stop.


 The new location had beautiful granite rock formations in the middle of the meadow but the flowers were mostly done. Still it was quite beautiful with the various shades of drying grasses and plants. We walked around for a bit and decided to head over to the Jones store hoping for some cover from the rain. Realizing I had left my new tripod back at the other location our guide drove me back while the others set to paint the classic old buildings around the Jones store.

 I tried doing a water color of the scene with the old gas pump while sitting under a tree but tiny drops kept hitting the paper making in difficult to have any sort of control. Most of us gave up sketching and brought out our cameras. The place was next to a beautiful meadow so I set about mostly photographing flowers. There was quite a variety even for the extremely dry year we've been having.

One of the YWA members has a small cabin up here and invited us all over for hamburgers. Each of us had also brought a side dish. It was a whole lot of food, but the rained stopped just in time for us to eat outside under the trees near a trout filled creek.

I promised myself I'd come back soon so I could explore the area on my own. A week later that is exactly what I did. I'll share some of that trip in my next post.