On Facebook the only group that I belong to is "Eastern Sierra & Scenic Hwy 395". I like it because I love the area and people post a lot of photos. Some of them are really good photographers. One day I came across a photo of a little stone cabin and some great mountains. I usually prefer to use my own photos for paintings, but once in a while I find one from someone else that just cries out to be painted.
I walk the mile-long trail to the water tower from the barn a couple of days a week and I've been doing it for months. I am almost always accompanied by Maureen riding Zim and Judy riding Mumu. When I reach this spot on the trail I often think it would make a nice painting. Now I've finally done it. I walk pretty slow, so by this point the riders are usually far ahead, but I don't mind. I sit on a bench by the water tower and wait while they ride a little farther.
In September, 1973, we did a backpacking trip into the Glacier Peak Wilderness in the North Cascades of Washington. It was some hard hiking, especially for Maureen, who was three months pregnant with our future son Aaron, and our dog, Matt, who had to carry all of his food in a doggy backpack. We drove to the town of Darrington northeast of Seattle, and hiked up the White Chuck River to Kennedy Hot Spring, then thousands of feet up to Lake Byrne. We found a campsite near the lake shore with an incredible view of 10,541 ft. Glacier Peak across a huge canyon. I used my camera's self timer to get a shot of us in camp. In painting it I expected the top half to be difficult, but it turned out to be quite easy, but the bottom half was hard because it was very dark and murky in the photo and I'm not so good at doing people, especially ourselves. I'm thinking of trying it again in landscape orientation so I can use it in my next calendar. I recently looked it up and found that this hike is not possible anymore because several years ago floods wiped out everything — road, trail and hot spring.
