Two Months Flew By

I can hardly believe half of 2016 is already over, but it was sure plentiful in adventures.  I feel as if I've lived 4 life times in the past 62 years.  My life has been full of wonder and marvelous things.  I wouldn't even know where to start telling the stories, but the best part is, I'm entering a new phase of life, with many more promising adventures to come.  The photo on the right is of a co-op somewhere in Oklahoma maybe, I don't remember.  What I do remember though, is, I took it from a moving vehicle.  I'm getting pretty darn good at doing that if I do say so myself.  If we stopped every time I saw something of interest, it would take years to get across the country.  That would be something I could do when my loving hubby decides to retire.  For now, I'm content to go along for the ride and snap pics through the windshield.   This one might be worthy of a painting.  Yes? No?  If time permits?  

Art Everywhere You Look

I recently took a weekend road trip up to Evanston, Wyoming for a photo op and to enjoy the horse races.  Yup, they are running again after several years of being shut down,  New owners are back in business.  Not to be side-tracked, we were driving around town and we found this amazing old brick railroad round house,  Parked next to some older derelict buildings was this dining car.  Someone had boarded up all the windows which was probably a good thing, but they also had painted people sitting at tables on the wood.  You never know where you might find the work of another artist.  I'm always on the look out.

Found art is appreciated and I know several artists who like to leave little tokens of their work for others to find. It might be a sticker on a light pole, a wall mural behind a gate, a scrap of paper left on a table,  You never know where you might find some artwork so be on the lookout.

Lucky New Year

Another really fun thing that happened while we were on our trip, we stopped at Mesquite and I won a Jackpot on a penny machine.  The first pull and this is what I got!  What a way to start the New Year!
 

Available Now

"Art & Place" an in-depth look at art in unconventional settings throughout the Northern & Southern Hemispheres of the Americas.  If you are an "Arm Chair Traveler" this book will take you on a road trip that expands time.  The journey begins in Canada and travels in a zigzag style to finally reach the great countries of Brazil & Peru while showcasing major historical & current contemporary art in between.  From the carved totem poles, to Diego Rivera in Detroit & Mexico City, to a spiral jetty here in my home town of Salt Lake City (as seen on the cover) and reaching across the country via Chicago, Boston and DC to New York where you can visit an amazing array of places & art pieces, via high quality photos. In Los Angeles you can visit Simon Rodia's "Watts Towers" that took him 34 years to construct and is now a National Historic Landmark or visit the Lightening Field in New Mexico for a show from Mother Nature.  (A storm would be required if you were there in person, but visit through the photos in this book and you won't have to wait months to see the show.) Throughout this vast space of land, there is art in the form of rich carvings, faded paintings and works that took years of pain-staking labor.  This one book brings it all together for us and provides us with detailed descriptions and a wonderful glossary of the various art styles & movements throughout our history.   A must have book for the "arm-chair traveler" and art lovers everywhere.

Last Road Trip-2011

We took the trailer out for its maiden voyage last weekend and had a wonderful time exploring a new area of Idaho that we had not seen before.  Did you know that Soda Springs has a geyser that shoots up in the air almost as far as Old Faithful!  It certainly appears to! 

We saw so many interesting things and I took way over 400 photos so to even search through them for any one great photo is pretty daunting right now, but I will share a couple of them with you.


This is where we stayed, out in the middle of a wheat field.   It was amazing in that the sky was so stormy looking and everything had this golden tone to it.  The colors were deeper than normal and I just couldn't get enough of the browns and golds everywhere.  We had a great time, but cut our trip short a day since we had a problem with the furnace.  See the snow, not a good time to not have any heat! LOL!







This was such an amazing thing to see, it is a wooden water duct that had sprung so many leaks.  It could be seen for miles in either direction and eventually led to the damn, where it was converted to a metal duct.  I had never seen such a thing before, but it was like viewing oak wine barrels, laid end to end for miles.

South Dakota Road Trip

Out of over 500 photos I took while on our recent road trip- these were my favorites.  Mount Rushmore and the scale models used to create the images.

Crazy Horse Monument-You can fit one Mount Rushmore in the hair above the ear of this statue.  This monument will be the largest in the world.  The bottom photo shows how the actual mountain will be carved.  This is a multiple acre monument that will house a full scale university and multi-functional services.  It will probably not be finished in my lifetime, but it is a work in progress. 

Custer State Park-There were plenty of roaming buffalo throughout the park but none this close.  I could reach out and pet this one, but I thought Mama might ram my car, so I kept my hands to myself.  She was adorable though and she frolicked constantly.  It was hard to get a good picture of her.