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!

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.