Last September, on our Mammoth trip, we drove out to the east of Mono Lake looking for wild horses. After seeing a herd of them in the far distance, but failing to get close to them, we continued driving east to Benton Hot Springs. It was an interesting historic spot but disappointing because everything was closed to the public. There's not really much there but this old building and a hot spring resort. I guess you have to stay at the resort to get the full experience.
This is a scene from a backpacking trip that Gerald and I did in 2008. We spent four days going from Rock Creek over Mono Pass and into Pioneer Basin. This was at Ruby Lake early in the morning of our second day. I painted the same scene nine years ago (see May 2014, "spring 2014"), but although I liked it, I was unsatisfied with the muddy colors in the reflection. This time the painting is lighter and less colorful, but I think I did a much better job and it comes a lot closer to the original photo.
I looked through some photos from our first big trip to the Southwest in 1992 and picked out a few as possible subjects for paintings. The first one that I tried was one of Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly. It's a very interesting place — as much for the canyon views as for its location in the middle of the Navajo reservation. You don't get much sense of size from this view, but the rock is more than 800 ft. tall, a pretty spectacular place.
On that same 1992 trip, we camped for a couple of days at Capitol Reef National Park. We loved the place, especially the area of Fruita, the remains of an old farming settlement of Mormon pioneers. The campground is there next to an apple orchard where the deer came to eat every evening. This old barn is there too, which made a nice scene against the colorful cliffs.
This was another scene from our 1992 trip. We were in New Mexico and visited one of the small Native American reservations or pueblos between Santa Fe and Taos. There wasn't much to see at this village, but we enjoyed walking around a bit and this stone gate to a cemetery caught our eyes. We stayed several days camped on the shores of the Rio Grande and we loved the interesting history and culture of the area.
On our 1992 trip we made a stop at Monument Valley. It is an amazing place, but I was a bit disappointed because of the way the tribal park is set up. I expected something like one of the national parks, but found just a big visitor center that seemed to be only there to sell guided tours. We saw a few cars heading out from the big parking lot on a dirt road, so we followed them. It felt like we probably weren't supposed to go there except with a tour, so I kind of expected to be stopped by tribal police and told to leave. That didn't happen so we drove around a loop road with lots of great views. At one point off to the side of the road was a navajo woman and a kid sitting in the sand all dressed in beautiful traditional clothing. Apparently we were supposed to pay them to take their photo, but I didn't stop. I was hoping to be able to hike around, but didn't find any trails and getting out of your car was not encouraged. I did get a few good photos and used one of them to paint this.
