Drawn the Road Again

Category: Off the Beaten Path

  • Pathfinder

    Pathfinder

    The winding river channels in the sketch I posted on Wednesday reminded me of the unusual hiking “trails” they have on the campus of the Penland School of Crafts. They’re just mown right into the grass of the huge central meadow in front of the school. From up the hill, it looks like some sort of…

  • Dusky delta

    Dusky delta

    As much as I love road trips, my hands-down favorite way to get between Tacoma, WA and Portland, OR is by train. Especially along the Puget Sound—where the tracks run literally inches from the shore—the views are absolutely gobsmacking. On this day, I was lucky enough to have a flawlessly sunny afternoon (in April that’s…

  • Babe-y blue

    Babe-y blue

    There are a lot of Paul Bunyan statues out there (and I’ve sketched a bunch of them, as you’ll see in the coming months), but I honestly think there are none finer than the magnificent Paul and Babe way up nort’ in Bemidji, Minnesota. In fact, I may go so far as to say these…

  • Bearing fruit

    Bearing fruit

    The Tailor and I love peaches (and he loves canning them) so much that we’re willing to drive four hours to get them fresh from the orchard. (Of course, that also means I get that Movin’ to the Country, Gonna Eat a Lotta Peaches song stuck in my head every year…) You’ll find a few…

  • Smoke signals

    Smoke signals

    Tomorrow is my fifth anniversary of living in Washington state—so in honor of the occasion, the next few posts will highlight the Pacific Northwest. It’s been fascinating to see all the faces and incarnations of Mt. Rainier in my time here (so fascinating, in fact, that I did a whole book about it). But I…

  • Miracle Mile

    Miracle Mile

    More vintage goodness along Highway 99: sunny Redding, California is filled to the brim with old neon signs. On this day I was road tripping with a fellow travel blogger, my friend Mary-Alice (and her pup Chloe). The girls were remarkably patient with me while I insisted on stopping every thirty seconds to sketch more…

  • Fresh as a daisy

    Fresh as a daisy

    This is one of my favorite signs on Highway 99—the old backbone of the West Coast. Everyone has heard of Route 66, of course, but the Old Pacific Highway is also full of aging neon and other vintage gems, from Canada to Mexico. The Daffodil Motel sign has a special place in my heart because…

  • Towering guilt

    Towering guilt

    You know, if you think about it, a place that lets you pay money to drive your car through a hole cut into a centuries-old living redwood tree is kind of the perfect illustration of the bad side of American culture. The first time I was (literally) in this neck of the woods, the guilt…

  • Lush, eh?

    Lush, eh?

    A couple of summers ago, the Tailor and I took a cross-country road trip along the Trans-Canada Highway. For hundreds and hundreds of miles, the roadsides were dotted with bright pink, blue and purple lupines. It felt like all of Canada was one big, bright bouquet.

  • Giddy up, Ichabod

    Giddy up, Ichabod

    I have a thing for covered bridges—and thankfully, many other people do, too. That means the communities that possess these relics work hard to preserve them, and I’m grateful that there are still covered bridges for me to sketch. And each one is so wonderfully sketch-able, because they’re all so different. The Cornish-Winsor Bridge, which…