OBSERVATIONS ON TRAVEL

I recently returned from a solo road trip to the Oregon Coast.  The purpose was to spend time with artists who speak my language and to replenish creative juices.  Actual miles covered in a little more than a week were 1064.  The following is a list of my observations about the trip.

THINGS I ENJOYED:

1. The freedom and opportunity to travel, learn and appreciate

2. The ocean in all its moods colors and weather

3. Spectacular, iridescent sunsets in an unlimited  variety of silvers, blues, lavenders and scarlets

4. Pacific Northwest rain which turns the landscape to a lush and verdant garden

5. Well maintained highways and freeways with rest stops and scenic pull outs and the hard-working people who keep them that way

6. Public bathrooms, often acceptable, and available in stores, restaurants and rest stops

7. Friendly, honest strangers who return a carelessly dropped change purse, smile and share experiences while waiting in line and who don’t make obscene gestures at the driving behaviors of a dufus from out of town

8. Digital cameras with an almost unlimited amount of memory

9. Cell phones and open wifi to keep me connected

10. Coming home to family, friends and a friendly, familiar quiet neighborhood

 THINGS I DIDN’T ENJOY:

1. The freeway system in Portland, Oregon; mostly a parking lot at rush hour, difficult to impossible to navigate in an east-west direction and crazy making for anyone from out of town

2. Sand in places it doesn’t belong

3. No sunrises

4. Pacific Northwest rain which often seems interminable and permanent, making life depressing, dreary and dismal

5. Highway construction, orange barrels and cones, confusing detours and trucks flinging gravel that chips my new windshield

6. Auto-flush toilets which detonate without advanced warning and threaten to suck one down into sewer hell

7. Tourist crowds

8. Tourists with digital cameras and no brains

9. GPS instructions that get me even more lost

10. Coming home to the mundane 

OREGON WILDFIRE

Tuesday I was driving down the Columbia River Gorge which is also the border between southern Washington State and northern Oregon.  I wasn’t in a rush so I decided to explore the Historic Columbia River Highway. It goes in the same direction as Interstate 84 but is a slower and more scenic route.

 The Columbia River Highway, also known as Highway 30, was finished in the 1920’s.  It was designed to offer scenic views of wide vistas and plenty of waterfalls.  When the four lane Interstate 84 was built in the 1950s, highway travel became swifter, but views of the Columbia River Gorge were sacrificed.

In recent times the old highway,

…along with some impressive stone guard rails and bridges have been restored where possible.

The westbound highway began just out of The Dalles.  I stopped at a visitors’ center to learn how to find my way there.  The lady said because of a huge range fire the nearby section of the Historic Highway had been closed and she wasn’t sure it had been re-opened.

 I drove off to find my way back to the Interstate and somehow stumbled onto Highway 30. 

A haze of smoke filled the river canyon as I drove on expecting to meet up at any time with road blocks.

 In many places the ground had been blackened right down to the road and the branches of the trees were scorched where the fire had passed by.

 Evidence was everywhere of the battle between the blaze and the firefighters.

 Sometimes a line in the dry grass marked where the flames had been stopped.

 I didn’t see any burned structures but some buildings must have seen the fire up close before it was extinguished.

 It was around noon when I passed by a fire crew taking a lunch break.

 Some of the guys were kind enough to pose for my camera.  They said the fire had been contained except for a few hot spots and they were turning the job over to the county fire department to keep an eye on things and snuff out any remaining sparks.

 I’m guessing there was a team up the hill working on the source of this smoke. 

A few hours later I traveled through a heavy rain storm moving through the canyon which probably helped the fire fighters finish their job; and increased the possibility for more fires with the lightning and wind.  

According to the news, close to a million acres in the Washington and Oregon area have already gone up in smoke this summer and many wildfires are still burning. 

MILLION DOLLAR VIEW

Last June I mentioned our drive through the Colorado San Juan Mountains and one of the adventures we had on our scenic drive along the twisting stretch of two-lane black top between Durango and Ouray also known as the “Million Dollar Highway.”

Most of the watercolors I paint are landscapes of favorite places.  There is not enough lifetime to paint souvenirs of all the scenery we saw on this trip through New Mexico and Colorado, but this is one I just finished.

 I started with a value sketch using a combination of photographs I took of a huge mountain we could see across the valley as we climbed out of Durango and over Coal Bank Pass, elevation 10,640 feet.  I think this one is called Twilight Peak.

I transferred the sketch to 140 cold press watercolor paper, stretched it, taped it and put down a couple of washes over the drawing and some masking I applied to save the white snow.

From there I added details to the mountain and more colors to the hills that drop down into the steep valley.

The final piece is 11x14 inches and would look really good matted and framed and hanging on a wall in our living room.  But for now I have it listed for sale on my Etsy site, Watercolors by Leenie to see if there is anybody out there with a similar appreciation for this classic Colorado scenery.

A quote from a web site about US-550 which includes the Million Dollar Highway:

 Even the origin of the “Million Dollar” name is clouded in myth. Some say it was first used after an early traveler, complaining of the vertigo-inducing steepness of the route, said, “I wouldn’t go that way again if you paid me a million dollars.” Others claim that it derives simply from the actual cost of paving the route in the 1930s. But the favorite explanation is also the most likely: When the highway was first constructed, the builders used gravel discarded by nearby gold and silver mines, only to find out later that this dirt was actually rich in ore and worth an estimated “million dollars.”