driving Arkansas roads

Driving the Arkansas Ozarks is always lovely. I had never been here in the winter before --- there is less color but it is still beautiful.

Sketching in a moving truck proved a bit too bumpy so I snapped several photos through the windshield to sketch from later. Afterwards, it seemed all I got were shots of roads curving right; I'm sure we must have curved the other way at some point!

I brought back several large rocks / petrified wood from our friends' rock garden. We have a planting bed next to our cabin that gets flooded when it rains, and had decided to put in a rock garden with a few containers there. So now I have large specimen rocks for that area. Bill teased that my rocks were putting the weight limit over the top --- nothing to do with that industrial metal lathe he brought back, right? It only tips the scale somewhere over 1000 lbs. after all.

One of these days, I will sketch a few of the rocks.

travel essentials ready to go . . .

. . . except that I found no time to actually sketch. We traveled to Arkansas to help a dear friend (actually we adopted her as our sister) move her parents, both dealing with dementia, to Kansas. And that was quite an adventure!

An example of what we walked into: the day before the movers were scheduled to arrive, our friend's dad yelled at her, saying he told her to pack up the kitchen stuff --- every plate she put into a box, her mother took out and placed back in the cupboard, telling her to stop or she'd slap her.

But we eventually got things packed up, with the help of a very gracious team of movers, and helped them get settled in their new house in Kansas. Then a quick trip over to Wichita to see my mom and then visit my dad & step-mom. We even got to spend time with our dearest friends from El Dorado and Bill visited several old work buddies --- we squeezed quite a lot into one day.

All I got sketched was the first pages of my new journal, showing the supplies I packed in my bag. But I took photos to draw in the book now that we are again home, to document the trip. It is a very long drive, made longer when an 18-wheeler crashed with a cement truck north of Dallas, closing a main freeway right as we were coming up to it. 

40-mile-an-hour winds literally blew us home as well, complicating the load in the back of the truck, a small industrial metal lathe that was given to Bill. And 7 petrified wood "rocks" that I kept from Arkansas for a new rock garden I'm putting in. Of course, they are what Bill said was tipping our weight over the maximum allowed in his truck!

an Arkansas rock, the end of another sketchbook

I brought this large rock home from a recent trip to Arkansas, loving the variety of colors and textures. While drawing it last night, I kept seeing visions in my mind of the Grand Canyon which I saw in person 29 years ago.

And now I'm finished with this tiny accordion-fold sketchbook. Not sure where to put it on the shelf though --- The first side was filled in Dec. 2014 and the second side in July 2015. I store my sketchbooks chronologically on the shelf, 

visiting friends, part 2

We took the long way driving home from Kansas to Texas. We had returned to Kansas in order to pick up a rack for Bill's woodshop that had not fit in the moving van last January . . . and visit a few friends and family in El Dorado.

On the return trip we went by way of Arkansas to check on our dear friends, George and Shirley. When Bill and I were still in high school and in need of someone who would simply care and listen, this dear couple was always there for us. In fact, I met Bill through their son Steve who I was dating at the time --- the best thing Steve ever did for me was to introduce me to his best friend, Bill. Except for when Steve took me to church, where I first met the Lord Jesus.

Anyway, George and Shirley remain our adoptive parents to this day. Spending time with them was very special. They live in a heavily wooded area near Norfolk Lake. I wanted to paint some of the view from their back yard but failed to capture its beauty . . . so I used the pages as background to some journaling.

The sketch on the right side is their current dog, Maggie. There were always dogs at their home, each with memorable personalities. Maggie and our Scottie, Ceilidh, had lots of fun romping in the yard and fighting over toys.

On the left, a huge pine cone that fell from a tree right as Ceilidh and I were walking under it, with such force it seemed to be thrown right at us. We had stopped at a roadside park to let the dog run a bit. No other pine cones fell and none others were on the ground.

visiting friends

When Bill and I were teens (a long time ago) and in need of a listening and caring ear, our friends George & Shirley were there for us. They were parents to Bill's high school buddy Steve, who introduced me to Bill.

They retired to the Arkansas Ozarks many years ago.  After a quick drive back to Kansas last week to pick up some shop equipment that missed the moving van, we took the long way home to visit them. Good thing we were in the truck . . . George, a fellow wood craftsman, gave Bill a bunch of cedar and a band saw. Two pieces of the cedar are rough-cut with the bark still on the edges --- hopefully one will be made into a bench to sit in front of our cabin.

a few more leaves . . .

When Bill had his heart attack, he said his goal is to go to Arkansas for his birthday . . . . and so we did, visiting dear friends in the woods of Mountain Home.

We took several walks everyday, enjoying the signs of Autumn, bird songs, and peace. Makes us look more seriously at properties in the country when it comes time to buy our next home.

Mostly the woods are oak trees. LOTS of varieties of oak. These are just a few of the leaf types we saw. No burr oaks though -- that's the most common type in our Kansas neighborhood.

In a way, we were celebrating the changeable beauty of Autumn, which we won't see much of after moving to Texas.

We chose a different path driving home, going through Bolivar, MO where a couple of our kids went to college. Later we stopped to eat in Fort Scott, where my great grandparents' home was. I have very fond memories of visiting my great-aunt Lucile there. I take after both her and her younger sister, my grandmother. Lucile as also my childhood penpal.

how I spent the 37th International Sketchcrawl . . .

. . . and the previous day. We took a quick trip to visit old friends now living in Arkansas. They were like parents to us when we were teens and in need of a caring, listening adult. Very dear to both of us.

It rained the whole time, but Ceilidh was still able to have fun running circles in the huge backyard, chasing squirrels, birds, chipmunks, and deer. I also saw a pair of pileated woodpeckers, though not long enough to draw them.

Our friends live in a forest near Norfolk Lake -- lots of tall oak trees which were just beginning to turn color.

 

Here, a quick sketch while waiting to eat breakfast before leaving for home. Very thick fog soon changed to more rain and heavy winds -- we stopped for a late lunch in Parsons, KS where I drew this Texas longhorn skull hanging on the wall.

last pages . . .

. . . of our recent trip to Arkansas, and of this art journal. Time to start working in a new book.
One morning Bill called me out to the backyard, which slopes down to a heavily forested area between our friends' home and Norfolk Lake. On the other side of the fence was this newborn fawn, still a bit damp. Bill had noticed a movement and briefly saw the mother, then found this baby laying against the fence.
We kept an eye on the little deer all day but no more sign of the mother. We know she was watching us; we just did not see her. Early the next morning, both were gone. There was an impression in the grass where the mother had lain next to the fawn during the night before moving it to a more hidden spot.

As for the silly grinning piece of wood -- here's an untouched photo. George is a very talented wood-turner, creating lovely works of art from rough cuts of wood on a lathe. One day he cross-cut a piece of wood for a new bowl and this is what he saw looking at him. Totally natural.

Ceilidh's Arkansas souvenir

I used this stick to lure Ceilidh up the hill leading to our friend's house; she seemed just about ready to squeeze through the holes of the back fence --- I obviously could NOT follow her through those holes and into the woods, so I tricked her into running after this stick.

Then she proceeded to chew right through the hard wood.

bits of Arkansas

While visiting friends last week in Arkansas, we spent a lot of time in their yard --- at the edge of the woods next to Norfolk Lake. (Bill and I had the ticks to prove it -- never had 'em before.)

With recent rains, there were loads of mushrooms --- these are only a few of those found in their yard. Not sure if I named them correctly; my field guide is pretty old.