AI to recreate a lost picture

Here is another use of Google Gemini AI. A LinkedIn discussion here described fog/cloud banks in Cen. & Nor. Cal. against nearby ridges.  I commented on same viz. Yucaipa Valley & Ridge in So. Cal. Here is my comment:

How interesting! I lived in Bakersfield the winter of 97-978 (... when gas was 99c./gal. at the pump next to LAX!) with that fog ['Tule Fog' filling the Central Valley wintertimes]. Then in Redlands a decade later, in "the Valley of the thousand Smokes" as the Serrano Indians originally called the current Yucaipa Valley, I witnessed not a fog as much as low cloud cover. So the same view if you stood on the Grapevine looking N or the Yucaipa Ridge looking S - in fact it's called Rim of the World, coz said cloud cover made u feel look like ur overlooking the edge of world. Not unlike in The Gods must be Crazy 1982 film,  Xi the Bushman throws an empty Coke bottle into the fog rimming Table Top Mtn above Cape Town... It's not "different folks, different strokes", it's "different spots, same outlook" 😂

It made me look for a view from Yucaipa Ridge across Yucaipa Valley in So.Cal. I couldn't find a photo when I lived there 20 yrs ago, so I simply recreated it in Gemini AI. 

a) look in Google Earth for Hwy. 18 above Highland in the Yucaipa Valley to have this view looking N over Yucaipa Ridge (click to enlarge images):

 b) apply this prompt to it in Google Gemini (3.0 Nano Banana on old Samsung A12): 

Draw this view with a cloud bank at 4000' elev. to the left, if Hwy 18 at center along crest is at 5000' elev.

c) et voilà! Get this view that gave the local moniker "Valley of a thousand Smokes":

Note: this exercise is not unlike another one over 5 yrs ago here - finding a spot in the Himalayas dead-reckoning a ridge-line from memory in Google Earth -  based on a reconstructed view under a decade prior - restoring a view above Lake Como, N Italy, shrouded in mist that midsummer - no AI then! 

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Footnote: that moniker apparently came not so much from the clouds, as from fire smoke that perennially choked the head of dead-end valley - starts at San Gorgonio Pass  between Yucaipa and Palm Springs to the east, and opens to the west all the way to LA - nowadays it's mostly pines planted the last century and a half for lumber and scenery - picturesque communities like Running Springs or Big Bear are scattered among the pine woods - but they were originally mostly oak and grassland. Indians I met at a drum camp in the San Bernardino Mtns. a little further west (below) told me of the change in the landscape. The "thousand smokes" came from the grass fires that cleared the land periodically,  which the oaks survived and left open for, say, deer the Indians hunted.

Now the pine woods are occupied by said interspersed settlements. So perennial fires weren't allowed to blaze thru and clear the underbrush. The well-intentioned work of putting out fires actually built up what was to follow: as climate change spiked droughts and Sta. Ana winds, and beetle infestation decimated the woods, you had the makings of a perfect storm; terrible fires swept thru when I was there 20 yrs ago, and do so right  to this day... And did you know that all were started by downed powerlines in an ageing infrastructure or by arson,  in addition to the standard lightnings throughout history?