Sunday at Painted Hills

Despite a flurry of moths pinging off the walls and windows all night, and systematically throwing covers off and then blindly searching for them to put back on... I managed to sleep just enough and to wake up early to get off of the mountain and down to the highway in record time this morning. 

An hour drive and a hike up to a great vantage point and I was ready to paint by 9 am! Applause, applause!

Check out my fully loaded Kelty backpack, I was ready for anything.

After some sketching I decided on a composition without a sky, I think my first landscape without a sky!

Sunday seems to be a busy day in the park, I had a lot of opportunities to visit with people... Well anyone who made the hike up to the vantage point ;) I was surprised how many people just walk part way or just walk to the edge, take a photo and jump back in the car!

4 hours in, just doing some minor tweaks, a boy hiking ahead of his family stopped to see what I was doing. He was probably 8 or 9... "I think you're done. You've already achieved a lot of depth." His name was Cole, so Thank You Cole!

A couple from Bend came up about then so I asked the girl if she would take a photo for me...

Umm, could you get any FURTHER AWAY?? Too funny.

Overheated, thirsty and tired, I retreated to a small cafe in the bustling town of Mitchell ;) 

A Very Good Saturday

Legs stretched out across a couch, I'm eating apples and sipping a Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA (I'm going to miss these!) and I'm thinking... This was a really good Saturday!

I made it off the mountain in pretty good time, earliest time yet :) I drove up the road to Foree and hiked out to the end of a trail to paint this giant blue geological formation, ie "rock." I'll have to check with one of the ever growing number of Geologists staying here what the real name of the 'rock' is, probably some lahar butte or such and such...

but I just like how it is the only free standing blue rock and it has beautiful shapes within its mass. It also seems like the same shape as all my gear in my Kelty backpack;)

I was out there and set up at 10 am. Already hot. No one else around. So, so quiet. About 3 hours in, a couple from Vancouver, Washington hiked by and stopped to visit for awhile. Later a young couple came through, didn't stop or visit but did have their selfie stick trailing them the entire time. Sigh.

As I said it was hot. It was bright too with the sun bouncing off all the light blue, green and pale yellows... I decided to paint my piece in those 'high-key' colors and values. Came out great.

After packing everything back into my backpack and hiking to the car, I needed shade desperately. That's pretty impossible to find out here. I headed down the road, eye out for a pull out and shade... and 30 minutes later I found myself in the small town of Dayville in a cafe with ice tea, wifi and Marion Berry Pie. I had a salad of course too :)

While I cooled off and had a great lunch I was able to back up all my iPhone photos to Dropbox thanks to their wifi  (hallelujah!)

Feeling like the morning and afternoon had been very successful, I drove up to Blue Basin for a hike. AMAZING! The trail takes you around a blue rock gorge and to an overlook with spectacular views. On one side is a hill that is black from the big June fire and the other side opens out to the John Day River valley and the ash/rocks. Can't explain it but, look!

Took me about 1.5 hours, it's very steep and you climb for 2 miles and then switch back down for another mile. 

So, a very good Saturday!

Small World and Sketches

It's Friday, it's here so fast!

It's also sunny, blue and warm! (85 this afternoon) I drove back out to Foree this morning and hiked up to the 'Ring of Fire' - a steep but not too far trail up to an overlook with a sweeping view of layered rocks. 

The formations here are so unique, I started a painting but quickly realized I was making up some of the forms, not really understanding what was actually in front of me. I'm not a realist painter, don't even want to be, but I do want to understand what I'm seeing so I can push and exaggerate from something "real." 

So I walked to another viewpoint and sketched...

The formations are a lot like folds of fabric, triangles spilling down to triangles and fluid forms like curtains. The blue greens are a Celadonite (sp?) a type of low temperature Mica. Very beautiful.

As I was out at the end of the trail I saw a guy walking towards me with a huge backpack with a strange green contraption coming out of it... A Google trail camera.

So bizarre. Also, the guy was from San Jose :) His girlfriend was with him too, she is also an artist... Such a small world.

I met a lot of people today, I think because it is Friday and it was the first sunny warm day in about a week. I'm expecting it to be 'busy' this weekend here in the park, we'll see.

I'll stay close again... Which only means somewhere within 45-60 minutes of driving, as nothing is CLOSE and even if I see something stunning, I can only paint THE PARK.

We have two new campers tonight up at Lands Inn, the woman is a book artist :)

I love how random and small life can be and the interesting things you learn about someone when you don't have your face in your phone and strike up a conversation with strangers. Today I met a couple who live on a boat in Mexico,  a BLM Ranger/security patrol guy who lives in Pahrump, Nevada and a Photographer from Idaho.

Where I'm staying is very beautiful and pretty remote. No wifi. No internet. No cell service. Off the grid, solar and propane. Coyotes yapping. Cats running around. Somehow big moths get in my room every night... So my bedtime ritual is to catch and release the moths, write the blog, catch some more moths and go to sleep about 9! I post the days blog the next morning, when I stop by the visitors center :)

So goodnight! (Or good morning!)

Mixing Things Up

Well it did finally rain.

I stayed up pretty late Wednesday night, sitting close to the wood burning stove, nice and toasty, reading a book on my Kindle and listening to the fire crack and the rain hitting the hangar.

What I didn't realize was that it was actually raining pretty good. I found THAT out when I went to my little apartment and heard a drip, squish, drip, squish... and saw a very wet bed. 

Not my bed THANKFULLY!!! but a twin bed down at the opposite end of the big room. Water dripping pretty steadily from the metal roof, hitting the edge of the bed and then squishing into an ever growing wet swath of carpet. It was 10pm. 

So I pushed the bed out of the way, grabbed a plastic garbage can and set it under the dripping.

The drip squish turned into a tap, tap, tap as water drops hit a plastic liner in the plastic can. So, so glad I packed ear plugs!!!

After capturing and releasing 3 good sized, near black moths who seemingly wanted to read my glowing book with me - I went to sleep.

Thursday morning was drizzling and grey so I set out to find a good spot to paint Cathedral Rock. The rain pumped up the colors, gorgeous, and kept me from setting up the oil paints. So I pulled out my watercolor pans and painted the view from the back of my car, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Met a nice couple from Holland who stopped by to see what I was doing. 

I don't paint in water colors that often anymore, but just after today I'm reminded how much I love it. It was my first love! I'll have to not neglect it so much ;)

It continued to rain and was 56 degrees so I drove up to Foree, another section of the Park that has beautiful blue/green formations to hike around (ie: I needed to warm up!)

but as beautiful as it was I got frustrated and fixated on my stupid iPhone which wouldn't take anymore photos. I sat in the car seeing what I could delete and did this and did that but nothing. 

I drove back down to the Visitors Center and did some more deleting and checking what photos I'd already backed up etc etc and managed to make a little bit of room on the phone. Tomorrow I'll  drive to Dayville where there is a cafe with wifi and Pie ;) I'll back up photos to Dropbox and then delete the rest on the phone. So frustrating!! 

OK. Thankfully I made some room because the sky opened up and there was spectacular light! This is Sheep Rock right across from the Visitors Center...

Crisis postponed, I drove up to Blue Basin to hike. I only brought my sketchbook because it looked like it was going to open up and pour any moment. It's fantastic! Gorgeous! I'll go back and paint when it's not wet but wow wow wow! 

Look at that sky! Sketched though and met some nice folks curious about what I was doing and why I had Volunteer gear on :)

Tonight is game night. I'm here with 4 Geologists and the girl who is running the Inn, Molly, a few cats and the dog, Black. 

Tomorrow, more iPhone shenanigans and then hopefully blue skies and oil painting.

Clarno, the Furthest and the Oldest

I'd heard rain was on the way so planned on staying close and exploring Hwy 19 and the Sheep Rock section of John Day Fossil Beds.

As I drove up 19, I first came to an amazing layered and perfectly named  'Cathedral Rock.' No great pull-outs for roadside painting but I'll figure that out and be back!

The sky had tiny patches of blue, still mostly grey but no rain - so I decided to keep driving and head out to the furthest section of the park, it also happens to be the oldest Geologically; Clarno. (Approximately 53-40 million years ago.)

The weather held thankfully, and now I will have seen each section of the park and can more easily plan where to go for early morning light and for afternoon shadows. 

It took so long to get to Clarno! .. a bit over 2 hours. A beautiful winding road following the river, more mountainous and with great big pine trees... But it seemed to take forever. FOREVER!

Ahhh, but Clarno! So spectacular!

The palisades are enormous, you come around a bend and there they are!  Deep rusts and golden greens mixed with blues and mauves. Lovely.

Originally I wanted to go for a hike, just check out the area, but I had to get a quickish painting in, I mean - I'd come so far! It was fun to talk to visitors, not a lot of people out that way but nearly everyone I saw came over to say hello and see what I was doing. Of course I was decked out in my NPS Volunteer clothing, and people were curious about the Artist in Residence program :) I met people from Ohio, Germany, Portland, 'the Tri-Cities' (still not sure where that is) and Australia. 

I stayed as long as I dared because I knew I had a minimum 2 hours of driving to get back, I needed to get gas (station closes at 5), I wanted to get a good picture of the John Day River 

... and I didn't want to get back to Lands Inn in the dark because of all the deer!(Instead I had to maneuver around some annoyed cows.)

Just as I was closing the cow gate behind me, the rain began.

I will not go on a long drive tomorrow!

I'm now drinking a Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA (a fantastic local beer), eating scrambled eggs for dinner and visiting with Abby (the Geologist.) She just told me that tomorrow is game night and that a couple other Geologists from the park are coming up here for cards. Too funny.

Checking in and Checking it Out

It didn't take me long to grow accustomed to the sounds my home away from home makes: wind on corrugated metal, squawking hawks, cats fighting, moths throwing themselves against the windows and the pops and snaps of temperatures cooling. Snug under a heavy wool blanket and a down duvet, I slept.

Today I checked-in for my Residency. I drove to Sheep Rock where the visitors center is and met Rangers Bethany and Michelle.

I signed paperwork, received not only a hat and shirt to wear while painting in the park... I have a few hats, a few shirts and best of all a fleece vest. 

I toured the center; it has Paleontologists working in a lab which is viewable through large glass windows, a very impressive history center with mammal fossils and diorama murals with minerals and bones on display. 

I'm a bit obsessed about not running out of gas and locating the closest stations so I drove to the small town of Dayville to fill up the tank and then drove 1.5 hours to a section of the park called Painted Hills - stunning even in today's grey flat light.

Did a few very short walks through various points of interest and took an embarrassing number of photos.

It's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow so I plan on scouting nearby locations and sketching... Painting I'm sure will be on Thursday!

5 Miles Down a Gravel Road

First though, 90 miles from 'town' THEN the dirt and gravel road up to my lodging. 

You'd think I was stocking a bomb shelter by looking at my cart at the last grocery store for 2.5 hours. Beans. Quinoa. Packages of Mandarin oranges, tuna and chicken. Cans of vegetarian baked beans, tomato soup and a jar of almond butter. Green bananas, 12 Fuji apples, 8 oranges. Seriously, a very funny cart. 

Smart though, because I am truly, really, removed from it all. 

I filled the tank in Pineville and the next stop was a tiny town called Mitchell, known for having a public restroom.

Finally, up and up the gravel road, through obviously recent burned hills, I turned in to Lands Inn, my new temporary home.

I have a lovely apartment inside an airport hangar. My room has antique toy airplanes and various wheels and metal signs hanging from the ceiling. I love it.

I learned how to work the solar, the on demand hot water and was introduced to a sweet old dog named Black and a menagerie of field cats. I checked out my studio (perfect!) The view from my room is so serene.

Three adorable A-frame cabins line up outside the hangar, and I met the Geologist who has been staying here during her internship at the Park where I have my residency. She lives in Redwood City. I kid you not. She brought her cat, Apricat. Yep. Amazingly it hangs around outside while she's away at the park and then is here when she returns. Impressive.

We had a great visit and shared a Shiraz  I brought from home. Such a small world.

I'm writing this tonight but know that there's no wifi out here, so hoping I can post this tomorrow from the visitors center when I check in with the Park Service.

I'm so happy.

Heading North

I'm on my way.

Headed North by way of a car show in Cottonwood, CA followed by a delightful but quick visit with my NorCal family.

Cottonwood is like a movie set, with its 3' curbs and rings for tying up your horse. But the only horses I saw were the horse-powers under the hood of some beautiful classic cars! My Dad's car club, from Weaverville, had a couple cars in the show, so I stopped by to take a guided tour of the cars with my Pop. 

After the car show, I pulled my Subaru in behind a line of 57 Chevys and 38 Fords, and we drove North to Redding. 

Redding was my pit-stop for the night, and I was thrilled to get a proper visit in with my Sister-in-Law, Sarah (I know! Yes, there are now two Sara(h) Mordecais in our family!!) and my Nephew Nico (4) and identical twin Nieces Ruby and Zoey (2). My Brother is out fighting fires near Napa so I didn't get to see him.

My Dad and his wife Pam provided my Bed and Breakfast and sent me off in the morning with big hugs and well-wishes.

More North...

The drive was a gorgeous one, past a very low Lake Shasta and then a right at Weed and through the mountains and a very full Klammath Lake. I love these mountains!

More North still... and finally, Bend, Oregon. Love this town! The Deschutes was dotted with colorful paddle boards and kayaks, the temperature a tolerable 82, and it just plain smells good! It's the trees. Maybe all the breweries too.

I'd scheduled an in-room Massage (I'm a genius!) and a wonderful Jane gave me a well earned 90 minute deep massage followed by a terrific suggestion on where to grab dinner.

The Lot! A corner on the west side of the river with Food Trucks :)

Today my North will list to the East and after I stock up on groceries for 2 weeks, I'll make my way to John Day.

I hope I have wifi!