No Photos Allowed!

We are staying in a pleasant RV Park in Benson, AZ for a short get-away. This park has a series of ponds for catch-and-release fishing and it is home to ducks, geese and other waterfowl. Our parking space for the week is right in front of the pond where this drake and his girlfriend live. As I drove the car up to help guide Tom in the motorhome, this drake immediately started honking and hissing at me, saying "stay away from my girl and NO PICTURES!" Well, I fixed him, once we got settled into our space, I brought my camera out and put the longest lens on it so I wouldn't need to get so close to Himself. I learned the hard way that one doesn't make the choice to get up close and personal with a hissing and honking drake, one winds up running for one's life! That happened to me at an RV park in Dodge City, KS...despite warnings from Tom I got too close and this huge beast of a bird started after me....who knew geese could run so fast!


Here is the beauty he was protecting. They looked so pretty standing there in the dappled sun.

We'll start exploring the area tomorrow, so watch for more photos. The weather is good so far and no major problems with our trip down here. A minor one that could have been a major one was when stopped at a rest stop we were both outside the motorhome when the door lock loosened up and could not be opened from the outside. We spent about ten minutes and finally got it forced open. Good thing nobody reported us as breaking into a motorhome! When we arrived here Tom took the lock assembly apart and got everything adjusted and tightened up, phew!

Aubrey in Tutu

I know that some of you are going to faint that I finished two paintings with my art group yesterday and started another! It is such a joy to be painting more regularly again! I wanted to at least get started with the underpainting of Aubrey in the Tutu. After seeing a watercolor portrait of a fellow WcW member's granddaughter in a tutu, done in sepia, I knew that was how I wanted to do this. I remembered her portrait as being lovely done in monochromatic sepia, which I love to use anyway!

Since I am so proud of Aubrey's lovely red hair I have never painted her in anything other than living color, so this will be something different.

Autumn on Yupo

This is the second monthly project for the WcW group. Gina, one of the group's moderators, provides a lovely photo and we are all to paint from that photo. It is always so interesting to see how differently we all paint while using the same photo!

I chose Yupo as a ground for my painting since I love how the colors stay vivid on Yupo. I think Fall colors deserve to be vivid! I still have a long way to go towards being skillful with this "paper", but I sure have fun experimenting with it.

Rio Chama - Final?

Hooray! I think I am finished with this. Of course, that is subject to the Watercolor Workshop critiques if there is something that needs to be changed. This is one of the projects for this online group for the month of October. I have submitted it and will await suggestions.

Oktoberfest Photo

This is a photo of me and my cohorts at the Oktoberfest art show. The attractive lady on the right is Sue, one of my fellow artisan jewelers and she and I manned the jewelry table and glass display case all day. Ellen, in the middle, is the club's Treasurer and had stopped by to visit for a few minutes when one of the club's photographers, Gene, took our photos. Thanks Gene for sending them to me! Sue has some marvelous designs with her jewelry and wears them so well, she is a great jewelry model and showcases her art well.



Here, I am adjusting a bracelet for a customer. If you click on the photos, you can see the details of the jewelry displayed better. I knew I was going to wear this black and white top so I made myself a necklace/earring set with the same black and white stripes as my top. It is so much fun to be able to do that on a whim....makes me look kinda like I was stylin', huh? LOL

We all had paintings for sale, also, but this crowd did not seem to be the same art-buying type that we have seen in years past. I think the fact that after 11 years our community is full and has stopped building homes so people aren't looking to fill the walls in their new homes as much as before, they are more settled. Add that to the state of the economy and it made for poor sales of paintings. Sad and disappointing, but understandable.

Check out my Artisan Jewelry blog for an additional photo and mention of this show.

Aubrey and Mickey - An Artist at Work

I called our son, Pat, last night and while visiting asked what Aubrey was up to. He said he had set out her paints and she was painting before bedtime. I don't think she really wanted to be interrupted in her task, but she did come to the phone for a nano second. I asked her what she was painting and she said Mickey Mouse. I told her to have Daddy take a picture of her painting when finished and she said "okay...Bye"! and scampered off to paint. Too busy for a chat with Grandma this time!

She is starting to see shapes and, while not keeping "within the lines", is identifying shapes with her paint. I am hoping that she never feels it is required to stay within the lines as many of us were made to feel while painting in school...I want her to have a free spirit when it comes to painting what she sees. Good job, Aubrey!

The Best Artist - God

We had some motorhome tasks to take care of this morning, including checking the air in the tires, which means Tom wanted to check them before the sun raised their temperatures. So, I grabbed my camera and we got to the storage facility just as the sun was coming up. Please pardon the RV silhouettes as well as that terrible power line, but just look at those colors. As the overnight temps get lower (finally!) the sunrises are always so much rosier and more special here on the desert.

Coni, when you see this one please have Bill look at it, he told me he thought the two of you were much more of the sunset type of people rather than sunrise! I laughed at that one but remembered it.

Rio Chama WIP 7

Well, here we are at WIP 7....about three more WIPs than I usually stop and take photos of. Perhaps I should do more of this because it forces me to stop and think about what I really want to do next. Anyway, I like this water much more at this point and think it integrates better with its surrounding landscape.

Do all of you have a pondering easel? I do! I have French doors leading into my studio off the family room. If I place my painting on a table easel across from the doors and open them, I can sit in my recliner in the family room and look at my unfinished paintings now and again, often deciding what needs to be done or that I am finished and should do no more. Works for me! I do know I have to add more shading near the river bank and I want to add some tree branches and sticks here and there. But, this is enough for me to feel I am making progress, so will stop for now.

Whadya think?

My SWAP painting arrived!

I explained in an earlier post what the SWAP online group is all about and posted the painting I sent to my SWAP partner, Barb. On Thursday I received my SWAP painting from my partner, Kathy Nesseth who lives in Minnesota. I have another of her paintings and this will grace my studio's Hall of Fame as her first one did. She paints so realistically with details, yet in the painterly style I love.

This is such a fun online group!

Rio Chama - WIPs 4, 5 and 6

Welcome back to the Rio Chama! I painted at the Art Club yesterday afternoon and, as always, found it to be very therapeutic to be there painting with my art buddies. During this week of intense preparations for the Oktoberfest art show coming Saturday, I needed to paint Thursday afternoon!

Here, I started laying in some tree shapes to break up some of the bowling alley effects created in the last WIP. The trees were there, and were a darker, cooler color than the other scrubby trees that were more like tall bushes. I wish I could tell you their botanical names, but my fund of knowledge does not extend to botany!. I was trying to go with what I know in working back to front, cool to warm as I came forward. In this panorama format you don't have much room to show distance so I tried to use all the tricks in the aerial perspective bag that I could.

I started laying in some of the feathery middle ground sagebrush shapes, and with gouache this is easily done by putting the basic middle values in and then highlighting with a lighter mixture of the same color. This seems so backwards to me since, as I mentioned earlier, I am used to saving the lights and doing them first and then the darks. My brain is saying HUH? I then started adding more darks to ground the bushes. When in doubt, I usually start adding the darks, they magically seem to transform the paintings from coloring book style to more of a finished painting look.


Okay, here is where things started to go horribly wrong. I have never painted water with gouache and it sure is not the same as with transparent watercolor! I will scrub this mess out for my next session and start again, probably with transparent watercolor. I also want to add some rocks, the water was cascading over some of the larger rocks in the river and I guess I forgot that when drawing and painting. I wanted the river to be the center of attention in this painting, but not because it is so badly-done that it draws the eyes there!

I hesitated to show you this iteration, but if I am going to maintain my artistic integrity while showing WIPs, I need to show you the uh-oh iterations as well. So, here it is for now, once I survive the Oktoberfest art show on Saturday I will need to get back to this with my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and start making that look more like water. I did not use wet-in-wet techniques with the gouache, which in my mind is the main problem with my water, and may practice with a little gum arabic and gouache on another sheet of paper to see what I can do to make that flow together better and look more like water. This is an example of why I like taking WIP photos as I go along....the mistakes announce themselves better than if I just looked at the painting and wondered what was wrong with it. It is sort of like having someone else critique it from a photo, you notice things you did not notice when staring at the painting.

Rio Chama - WIP 3

I am sticking with my resolve to paint at least a little bit on this each day that I can. I decided to next lay in some of the basic tree shapes. It is so hard to wrap my mind around using gouache where you can put the darks in first and then highlight with the lights. This is totally against my watercolor inclinations to put the lights in first!I also darkened the cloud holes a bit more, and will continue to shade those along with the cloud shapes as I go.

I took this with my good camera, but the light situation is totally different than where I took it before, so it looks a great deal cooler than the first photo. Hmmmmm. I think the true painting tones are somewhere in between these two. I will adjust to be lifelike when I am finished with the painting.

"Editor's Note" - Now that I see this online, I see that I have achieved a "bowling alley" effect with the tree shapes I have added. So, I need to integrate them better to look less like soldiers marching in a row toward the horizon....sigh. Why don't I see these things or think of not doing them as I am painting?

Rio Chama Pano - Beginning

I know, you can hardly see this sketch on the watercolor paper. But, it is there. If you click on the photo, though, you can maybe see a few lines. I was at the Art Club and had my small camera I keep in my art cart and it doesn't pick up some of the details like my big camera. I just loosely sketched the mountains and river shape onto the paper. The resource photo was a panorama I stitched together from 10 photos while on our recent trip to Chama, NM. Barb and Charlie Lang were with us on this day and, while the scenery was colorful and gorgeous, it was nowhere near as colorful as I made this underpainting. I was having so much fun painting with my art buddies again (after seven weeks!) that I just kept choosing this color and that, merely because they looked "pretty" on the palette.

This painting will go into a 12x36-inch frame, as all panoramas should!

I completed the underpainting during this painting session. For some reason, I think I want to paint the rest of this with gouache. I have not painted with gouache for several years and want to give it a try again. I have recently seen some of Gary Keimig's landscapes done in gouache and it inspired me to drag out my paints to do that again. I was so sorry to hear of Gary's fall and need for surgery, this will mean months of his not being able to get out and about and painting more of his plein air landscapes of the West. Heal quickly, Gary!

I also have gotten Aubrey-in-the-Tutu down on watercolor paper, but will wait until I finish this one to start that. The day after I got the landscape sketched onto w/c paper, the Watercolor Workshop announced the theme for this month's project painting....landscapes with rivers, streams, etc. so since my timing for sketching this painting was so timely I will finish this one first. Sorry, Aubrey!

Sneaky Post

I normally keep my SWAP paintings under wraps until they are received by my swap partners. But, I decided to be sneaky and show you what I painted for my partner this time, but not tell anyone who that partner is. I hope he/she will like it.

I love being a part of this international group of artists, who swap paintings on a Secret Santa sort of basis quarterly. You never know from whom your painting is coming and your partner does not know from whom theirs will be coming. It is like Christmas four times a year!

Today, I will be starting two paintings by getting them drawn onto w/c paper. I really feel the need to get back to painting regularly again. I have not painted with my art club watercolor group for over seven weeks and am starting to go through withdrawal! I could not decide whether to do the painting from one of the panorama photos I shot on our recent trip or the one of our Aubrey in her tutu. So, I will start both at once! As requested by Vicki, I will post WIPs as I progress through these.

A Star in the Making

No paintings to post again today, so I thought I would share with you my next painting! I can't believe it is happening, it was just yesterday (I know it was!) that her parents sent a photo of her and a little friend at six months sitting together and wearing pink tutus... and now look at this! This is not right! Okay, it is not only right it is natural...where did the time go? I love the upswept hair in this and rejoice that she has more than when she was wearing the pink tutu at six months!

Tom had some dialysis-related health issues requiring outpatient angioplasty this week so we have decided neither of us has the energy to prepare for our Fall colors trip starting Sunday and have postponed that trip for another time. Maybe I can squeeze in some quiet time to work on painting this ballet ingenue or maybe my prior thought of a panorama painting. Changes in plans require pondering!

No Painting to Show!

I am working on a painting, but it is for my secret SWAP (Sharing With Artist Partner) partner so I can't show it until he/she receives it. These SWAP paintings need to be around 5x7 so for my next project I will try something larger. I took so many cool panoramic shots on our Chama trip that I am sure I can find something to paint from those! I want to try something to fit into a 36-inch wide by 12-inch high frame so that would work.

We had such a wonderful trip for our five-week escape from the desert heat. In fact, we had so much fun we are going back for a week during the peak (I hope!) of the Fall color season there. The forests surrounding this valley have so many wonderful aspen, oak and other colored trees in the Fall that I am sure it will be magnificent. I'll post 'em as I take 'em so you can see, too! Hopefully the colors will peak when we are there and not be too early or too late.

She's Started Pre-School!

OMG! Preschool for our Aubrey! Our granddaughter, at the age of 3 1/2, has started preschool. All seems to have gone well for her (and her parents) so far and she shows promise of being a student who enjoys her "studies". Being her grandmother, I have to think that she will enjoy the further stimulation offered by preschool and blossom further (being the super-intelligent lady I feel she is!).

PS... Yes, that is the baby doll we got her for her first Christmas...she carries it with her often. Too cool!

Goodbye Cia.....

In this new age of Internet communities, I am often struck by the closeness we feel to others whom we may never meet. This is true of Cecelia Antoinette Price (Cia). I came to "know" her through my membership in the Yahoo Groups site Watercolor Workshop. She was an artist (it so pains me to say "was") who lived in Alabama, a true southern lady who lived a very colorful life. She faux painted just about every room in her house with something colorful and had sent me photos of many of them. She truly was a muralist. She decided she had reached a point where she was going to paint what she wanted and was going to please herself so she did that in every way in her house and in the paintings she sold. She avidly set up E-Bay accounts and sold many paintings to appreciative buyers. She developed You-Tube videos of watercolor demos and wrote books about watercolor, sharing her talent.

Cia was diagnosed with cancer mere weeks before she left us. This was very unexpected and we didn't have the time left to absorb what was happening to her, which makes it harder to take and understand. But, that must be thought of as a blessing to her, for which I am thankful.

God bless you Cia, you were a good friend.....

Durango and Back to NM

Monday, we drove to Durango, CO. This is such an interesting town, with lots of Victorian architecture and quaint main streets. This photo epitomizes my memories of Durango, with the Victorian iron fence and flowers. Every storefront had hanging baskets of glorious flowers, all along Main Street. I took lots of photos of the grand hotels, etc. but this fence and flowers say it for me.

This is the Animas River. We decided to follow it along its course back to New Mexico on the way back to Chama. It was this low in some places and deeper in others along the way. The Animas River Valley was a very pastoral valley, with lots of hay fields and horse farms.

We happened to be driving through Aztec, NM and noticed a sign for the Aztec Ruins. We decided to see what that was about and I am so glad we did. These were the ruins of a large village. Some of the main kivas were restored, but lots were just the walls remaining. This was one site of ruins where we were allowed to wander throughout the rooms. Of course, the people of these village were very short people and we spent a lot of time bending to pass through 5-foot doorways. There were many manos y matates in the plaza of this village that had been excavated from the ruins. These were the grinding stones for their cornmeal.

We will be leaving this great place on Monday, we will miss the cool weather and wonderful scenery we have been able to experience. But, we plan to come back for the Fall colors that promise to be wonderful here. Just wait till you see those photos!

Another One From My Bucket List

I have really not become a train nut or something, but there is something so exciting about seeing views of an old steam train in this beautiful setting that I have taken hundreds of photos. While out exploring, we came upon an old train trestle. We eventually figured out it was being used by the Cumbres and Toltec railroad. I thought it would be so cool to show this trestle with the train locomotive going over, so that got added to my photo "bucket list" of have-to-have photos. We figured out just about when the train would be at the trestle after leaving the station (see above photo) . We drove up the mountain and set up the cameras and waited...and waited...and waited. For those of you who might be in the Chama area and want to take this photo, the time it arrived was 11:18 AM! It finally climbed up the mountain and here is the photo I was waiting for below.

Now, if I can get a photo of an 8-point buck elk before we leave I will leave satisfied! They certainly can see me coming with my camera because they hide from me. Others here have seen them, but I have not been in the right place at the right time. Sigh.

Rusty Creek

This is one example of the rusty creek beds in the area yesterday. I have some great shots of mountain streams that I want to paint, and they will all have this same color of the creek beds...rusty rocks! In fact, the name of this creek was Rusty Creek....duh!

To Summitville and Beyond

I took this photo to show you how high we climbed on the dirt road we took yesterday. This was 12,000 feet elevation! Surprisingly, neither of us noticed any difference in our breathing or any signs of being that high. Of course, we weren't hiking up there, but riding in the Xterra, but that is pretty high in the air.

This was our view on the way to the top of Lookout Mountain. These rocks contain so much iron they are this magnificent color in many places. Additionally, the water that flows down the mountains is so acidic and filled with iron that it is rusty! A sign said if you placed a nail in the creek water it would disintegrate within eight months! I will have to post a photo of one of these rusty creeks.
This is the ghost town that was Summitville, CO. This was a large mining area, I assume of iron ore given the nature of the rocks. All that is left of this town are many little shacks such as these and, now, a reclamation project sponsored by Superfund money, to return the area to its former environment. From the looks of the reclamation ponds and the scope of the job, this looks to be a big, long-term project! I spoke above of the rusty water...the reclamation ponds they were cleaning up had "bathtub rings" along the top, of rust. Really was an interesting sight/site to see.
This will have to be one of my fav photos for this trip. Along the Conejos River there was a herd of probably fifty horses running along a dirt path. I thought they must be a wild herd until we got to the end, by the river, and saw this one lone cowboy herding them to a different pasture. They were beautiful horses, with the sun shining on their backs in the early morning hours. The cowboy wasn't bad, either! I took many photos of these horses running, but I wanted to show one with the cowboy in it, bringing up the rear. Isn't being "out West" just great?!

Stay in the Car!

Yesterday we went farther afield as it was a "day off" of dialysis. We covered the 23-mile gravel road that we took from Horca to Platoro a week or so ago, which travels along the Conejos River. From Platoro, we took the 29-mile gravel road up the mountain to Summitville. It was such an interesting trip. Along the way, we came upon this sparkling little lake. Although we were on a public "road", the signs along this lake stated it was private property and had warnings of
"stay in car"! Well, Tom stayed in the car, but I quickly set up the camera for a panorama, he stopped at the right spot and I shot this series of nine shots over the hood of the Xterra and then we made a swift retreat. Shhhhhh....don't tell anybody! The scenery along this road was just gorgeous. Tom reminded me how many times I was using the adjective "gorgeous", so I switched to "majestic" as we climbed higher and higher.

I will post some more photos here shortly, we had another great day!

Barb's Hollyhocks

I posted my painting of the hollyhocks here at the RV park earlier. Barb, who was painting from the same photo as I, chose to paint the watercolor underpainting on sanded paper and then finish with soft pastels. I love her version! To see hers, go to her blog, it looks so soft and lovely.

Spontaneous Photos

Chama, NM is one of the train stations of the Cumbres & Toltec Narrow Gauge Railroad. We were heading to the store this morning and saw the smoke, which meant the train had left for the morning run to Antonito, CO. We raced ahead, stopping in five places along the highway where we could see the train well. It was such a fun time, staying just ahead enough to set up for more camera shots.

This is truly one of the advantages of taking these trips that I enjoy the most...the spontaneity of setting out to do one simple task and being able to take advantage of these special opportunities that present themselves! We plan on returning here in a few weeks, late September and early October for a week to take in the Fall colors. We have seen so many aspen, oak and evergreens here that it promises to be spectacular when they all turn colors. Hopefully, the week we have chosen will be the peak for the leaves!

Rio Chama

I was standing on a footbridge over the Rio Chama and took this 9-shot series of photos to stitch together into this pano. I also took the shot from the opposite side of the bridge, looking downriver, but have not processed that one yet. Like I said earlier, this was a beautiful area with beautiful weather....I love photographing landscapes when there are clouds in the sky.

As usual, click on the photo to enlarge it for more detail.

Great Day

This is one of the many views we enjoyed yesterday. The Rio Chama, south of where we are staying, is running much higher and faster there than here. There were many rafters and kayakers on the river and it looked like they were having a ball. When I say "we" I mean the four happy "campers" below.

This motley crew consisted of our good friends, Barb and Charlie and Tom and I. I had set the self-timer on the camera and tripped my way back in time for the photo. That is the Rio Chama behind us. We had great weather, wonderful scenery, nice picnic lunches and, best of all, a day spent with these two great friends. They are leaving Chama today, it has been so nice having them with us!

To make the day even greater, when we returned I was paid for selling another pair of earrings from my display in the RV park office. I have had lots of time for making jewelry and painting while here, I hope that continues!

Another Great Adventure

This is one of the many landscapes we visited yesterday. We were planning on taking a short morning trip to a road we had not traveled yet and then return for an early dialysis session. Well, one state highway led to another county road that looked interesting, which led to something else and it was after 2:00 PM when we finally returned. Of course, stopping every few minutes to take photos added to the time we were gone! The colors of that area were just phenomenal. This is part of the area that Georgia O'Keefe lived in and painted during the last part of her life. I can certainly see the wisdom of her choice, it is such a varied and colorful landscape here.

This is part of Lake Abiquiu. The water was so glassy and still when we were there! Wouldn't this be a wonderful place to have a houseboat?!

For my next project and post, I will stitch together some of the many series of photos I took for panoramas. Like I said, I took many photos!

Painting day

As requested by Susie Short in my prior post, here is the painting I worked on with Barb during our painting day. The RV park where we are staying this month has beautiful hollyhocks growing down the slope from the laundry room. I took photos the first day we were here and worked from those. I brought only a block of Arches 300-lb paper with me, as well as Pelikan transparent paints as my travel set. I am unused to working on the more absorbent 300-lb paper, as well as the more opaque paints, so this isn't what I expected for a result. However, I am not displeased with the softness of it. I think that hollyhocks require a more subdued effect since they are such an old-fashioned flower, or at least when I see them I feel nostalgic.

I am working on another painting now of the Rio Chama, which runs right beside the park. When we were here in May, the snow runoff made it run more swiftly and high up on the banks. Now it is a mere stream and rocks are visible on the sandbars.

I start working on another posting for today which shows some of what we saw on our adventure yesterday.

Barb and Charlie at Chama

Our good friends, Barb and Charlie, joined us in Chama for a few days. They are staying at a nearby lodge. She and I had great fun painting this morning at our motorhome while Tom and Chalie went for a drive for some photo op's. The temperature was perfect, Josh Groban was playing on my iPod player and we were painting together. As Barb said, "it just doesn't get any better than this!" I agree!

Wildlife!

We have been seeing quite a few critters in our explorations here. The chipmunk is robbing seed out of the bird feeder set out by one of our fellow RV'rs here at the park. The wild turkeys were seen along the highway and stayed there long enough for us to turn around and get some photos.

We hear of bear sightings and elk sightings down by the river just after sundown, but unfortunately that is when the mosquitoes are the worst and they like my skin too much to venture out at that time. This trip we are parked up above the river, in the open where the skeeters are not so bad. Our friends, Barb and Charlie, are due in tonight and she and I have a date to sit out by the river to paint one day while they are here in Chama. I am planning on changing that to sitting under our awning by the motorhome and painting from photos I have taken of the river! Don't like those mosquitoes!

Mule Deer in Chama

We went into the heart of Chama to the one grocery store here yesterday. I have learned to not venture forth in this area without my camera since there seems to be so much to photograph. Yesterday was no different. By the side of the main street in Chama was a grassy area; standing in this area, eating breakfast, was this beautiful Mule Deer. It just stood there and posed for me, we were not very far away from her and she was not bothered at all.

Right near our RV park I have so far seen multiple chipmunk sightings, a deer and a fox. Being from the desert I never get to see these critters; we only have coyotes, jack rabbits and the occasional bobcat! I am promised photos of the bear that comes down on occasion to the river here in the park, so will share those when I receive them. I have left my cell phone number with one of the campers at the river's edge that if this bear returns to give me a call and I will hurry there for photos.

Great Sand Dunes Nat'l Park

We drove to Alamosa, CO yesterday and decided to go up to the nearby Great Sand Dunes Nat;l Park. When we lived in Colorado Springs, CO back in the late seventies we used to go four-wheeling in this park, which was such fun. We only took photos this trip, however. The day was cloudy so there weren't the good shadows on the dunes, but the valley it extends into was so pretty I thought this would be a good pano shot. Another great day of exploring.....

Panorama

This is an eight-shot pano of the Trujillo Meadows Reservoir. It is of the north end of the lake. I also did a pano of the south end and will try to upload that in another post. These large files take FOREVER to upload to the blog, but at least it accepted this one. This was a glass-smooth lake when we were there and you can see the circles where the fish were jumping. No license, no fishing poles....so sad. It sure was a pretty area, though.

Hopefully, you can click on the photo and it will show more detail in a larger view....hey, I just tried it and it did enlarge it....cool!

Conejos River Valley

We drove from Chama toward Antonito, CO yesterday, turning off before we got to Antonito. One of the joys we find with exploring the areas we visit is the spontaneity to go off the beaten track and see what we can find. We saw the turnoff to Trujillo Meadows, had heard of that from friends, found a pristine reservoir there. I took some photos to stitch together of the lake and will do that later. When we left there, we found another side road that wound through the Conejos River valley, 23-mile dirt road that had breathtaking scenery the whole way. The round trip of 46 miles took us over three hours since we kept stopping along the way, frequently, for photo op's. It was a lovely day, perfect weather, wonderful scenery and the joy of discovery for us. We are so thankful that doing the dialysis in the motorhome successfully allows us a return to what we both enjoy so much...exploring places we have never been. Life is good!

Chama, NM

We made it to Chama, NM on Saturday afternoon. This will be our home for the next month! We chose a route through northern Arizona, driving to Gallop, NM the first day and driving through Farmington, NM to Chama on Saturday. This rock was one of the many we saw on this route. I think this must be the balanced rock capital of the world!

Proud Grandma!

Our son sent this recent photo of our Aubrey practicing mixing colors with her watercolor set. How fun is this?! I can't wait for our next painting session together, hope it will be soon. I want to send her some pieces of good watercolor paper. She likes my little surprise packages and I think she is ready to progress to Arches! We still have her first painting hanging on our refrigerator.

Also, please note the chair upon which she is sitting...we gave that to her for her first Christmas. She was too young then to appreciate it, but Patrick says she has claimed it as "her chair" and uses it all the time.