Archive for the ‘Colorado’ Category

If you caught my Facebook post yesterday, you heard the story of the horrendous borde crossing at Niagara.

Oy, one for the travel nightmares. Awoke to a beautiful morning on the Upper Peninsula, great views as we went across the Macinac Bridge, lots of green forests…..and then…..yea, verily, on the eighth day it rained…and rained…but we drove out of it. Our plan was to go to Flint and then east through Canada to avoid going through Detroit….same mileage essentially…..but then the border crossing south of Niagra Falls…..three and one-half hours from end to end…and I am NOT exaggerating…..construction on Canadian side, two to one to. two and back again to one lane that hardly moved. Finally could see booths, and that was just the Canadian side…..an absolute crawl over the bridge (and I am ot fond of bridges…freaking out, thinking how I would escape if the bridge broke)…and then more single lane to two lanes to three lanes to four lanes…NONE of which moved. Oy….probably not going too far tomorrow until we recoup…..eating dinner at 8:30 PM, which is unheard of for us…and it’s still light out. Must be karma paying us back for a great yesterday………

Here are a few shots of crossing on the Mackinac Bridge.
Crossing Lake Michigan

Mackinac Bridge

..and the beginning of the traffic at the border crossing….

Border crossing

Now  back to the art museum…

A fabulous sculpture outside the museum…can just see loads of kids climbing on it!

Another outside sculpture…reminds me of one in Tucson, near the downtown public library.

There were two coral sculptures inside the exhibit. This is one of them, talking about coral being the indicators of the health of a reef. This is all crochet….. The Branched Anemone Garden, Margaret and Christine Wertheim.

Kathryn Spence uses “dirty, discarded pieces to indicate the invasion of the natural environment by human-produced garbage.”

Leonardo Drew – “Number 162 is made from raw materials (wood, metal, paint, thumbtacks, paper, ink, graphite) that are manipulated and aged to suggest the passage of time and the cyclical nature of our existence.”

Wonderful  scenery today, and lots of pleasant thoughts, including some rain. In fact, humidity is now 38% and about 70 degrees….absolutely gorgeous. Northern New Mexico is really beautiful, with vistas from high desert to almost deserted plains. We left Santa Fe  (dew on the car windows….) and headed east, through Glorieta and the Pecos National Historic Park. I’d post my own pictures, but major problems trying to get pictures to work….

Lots of great green pines, small towns, streams with actual water in them. We headed through Las Vegas, NM through to Raton, and the landscape kept changing around every turn. The clouds mixed with sun, and there were so many layers to the clouds – you felt like you could reach out and touch the bottom layers. And then you are out into what appears to be “nothingness,” but is really just empty, gorgeous vistas.

Looking east -quick video of the landscape. If you listen carefully, you can hear a marvelous bird.

Looking west – same spot but looking to the west.

We  first went to Denver in the early 80’s, and things have really changed. Pueblo was just a small sleepy town that handled printing and distribution of all the government pamphlets. Not any more…manufacturing, new developments, and very spread out. Same for Colorado Springs…huge, and well spread out on the east side of the Interstate. And the traffic in Denver…oy. But we are in Denver to see the textile show at the art museum tomorrow.

When we went east three years ago, it had been 15 years since seeing all of our old haunts. I was taking pictures of green grass, dandelions….so many little things. Well, same thing today….

 Dew on the car….

Gorgeous rest area in Colorado….great grass!

Always on the look for tree bark….

To the art museum tomorrow!

Jane Goodwin, Mamacita of The Scheiss Weekly, says it best:

…anarchy is loosed upon the world….

Read the full article here.

May our thoughts be with the families in Aurora, Colorado….and perhaps we might still learn something……

The last quilt museum I had been to was the New England Quilt Museum with my AP class, who moaned and groaned about having to see quilts, but then fell in love with the quilts. This was a small museum, with two exhibits – Star quilts, including one by Jan Krentz, a quilt artist, that was quite nice. The primary exhibit was the latest quilts by Ellen Anne Eddy – oh my….talk about goose bumps…..

I have been following her quilts for about 12 years now, ever since I first “met” her on the QuiltArt list. I really think she has been responsible for quilt artists beginning to do much more thread embellishment. There were 15 quilts there, each one breathtaking, when you examine all the details – dyed lace, beads, threads galore, Quite the visual feast. What was so exciting was the epiphany that I could do even more with the marbled fabric than I had been thinking about. Dean and I both kept saying, “Oh, we could use a blue thread here” and so on. There are two spots in the glacier piece with some significant white that I had been worried about, but now I am going to use some lace to add texture to that particular spot.

I ended up buying her first book, Thread Magic, republished again by Quilting Arts LLC. I can definitely see moving in some additional directions with our fabric – beyond the stones and beads that are relatively new.

Ellen’s website: http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/eae.htm

This is the first tme in a lot of years we have been able to get out of town for an extended time and not have to worry about anything. We headed to Golden, Colorado to see all the great neices and nephews and had a great time with family. Two years ago we discovered the joys of audio books to get us through the same ole desert drive. Santa Fe is beautiful, as usual, but the drive north to Denver was full of traffic and construction. Pueblo and Colorado Springs have grown tremendously. But Golden seems to have retained much of the small time charm.

We went to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum (more later), had lunch by the river, went swimming with the kiddos (I am no longer a water slide virgin, but was I sore….), toured the Coors plant (Always remember your ABC’s – Always buy cases, always buy cold, always buy Coors), and went up Lookout Mountain where Buffalo Bill Cody is buried. The view to the west is fabulous, as you begin to see the ruggedness of moving from the Foothills into the mountains themselves. It was a pretty overcast day, but still a great view.

How can I forget Tiny Town? We took the kiddos to this mini town just for kids – lots of large doll houses in the woods that are replicas of actual hstoric buildings. Gracie and Gavin had a ball crawling through them – Jake and Gabby just wanted to eat, so not real restful for their mommies!

This is an area definitely to explore again – lots of monuments along the Santa Fe Trail, lots of parks, and I would love to explore the areas of Colorado Springs again. We’ll definitely be heading back.