Tag Archives: road

Cropping up

I spent one of my teenage years living on a rural military base in North Dakota. An interesting side effect of having to bus half an hour into town every day for school is that I learned to recognize every type of crop in the fields along the way. But when I moved to Washington, where they grow all kinds of things that won’t survive the short season of the northern plains, I had no idea what I was looking at half the time.

Enter the kind folks of Grant County—who clearly understand the incurably curious people of the world. As you pass the farms along any state or federal highway in the Quincy Valley (many of which are certified organic—bonus!), you’re greeted with helpful crop labels in front of every field.

It’s like they knew I was coming, and was going to want to label my sketches!

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 orchards on our side of the Cascades, but most of our famous Washington fruit is grown in the central part of the state, near the Columbia River Gorge. Crossing the mountains is a lot like entering a parallel-universe Washington, where instead of rain and emerald greens, you get high rugged cliffs and desert sun.

And sweet, delicious fruit.

So even though the farmstand ladies look at us like we can’t possibly know what we’re in for (oh, we do), we fill our tiny car to the brim—

—and break out the mason jars when we get home.

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 have never seen “the Mountain” (as we call it here) like I did on the day of this drawing. Because of the wildfires that were raging elsewhere the Cascades at that time, I was literally standing on the Mountain, and I could barely make it out.

Unfortunately, with the increase of wildfires we’ve seen in the West lately, I fear this might not be the last time I see the Mountain like this. Sending good thoughts to everyone living in areas affected by wildfires this summer.

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 won out, and I passed it by. Then, earlier this year, the side of me that plans trips around things like Wall Drug hijacked my internal monologue, screaming, “You HAVE to stop! This is EXACTLY the sort of thing you love! They already drilled the tunnel, so you might as well!” And so I gave in. And you know what?

I loved every second of it.

Sorry, redwood tree. I’ll go plant a sapling as penance.

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.

Four corners

The Tailor and I make for an odd pair on a road trip. I’m likely to put enormous thought into the road tunes, to cue up the exact perfect song to play as we pass through certain landscapes (I am also usually the only one who notices or cares, no matter who’s with me on a trip). He, on the other hand, is likely to have one half of his mind in the present moment, and the other half somewhere in the Annals of Random History.

For instance, on this day, I was all wrapped up in how the weather seemed to shift with the music, when the Tailor turned to me and said, “Did you know that considering today’s date and our current time zone, the Titanic was sinking precisely one hundred years ago?!?”

So of course I had to add that to the sketchbook. Doesn’t the desert remind everyone of maritime disasters?

40-watt bulbs

Every year I head north to the Skagit Valley to catch the tulip fields in bloom. If you’re looking for good travel weather, spring is a tricky time of year in the Northwest. But if you manage to get there on a rare sunny day, you’ll be in for a treat. The whole valley lights up with a dazzling colored glow that seems to come from the flowers themselves.

Crack of dawn

Hitting the road two hours before sunup is never exactly my favorite way to travel. But with a cup of strong coffee, some loud sing-along music on the stereo, and a worthy goal to shoot for…

…it can be well worth the effort.

Have sketchbook, will travel

You know when you’re on a road trip, and you see a highway billboard that says something like, “World’s Largest Two-Headed Calf, Exit Now!” and you consider stopping, just for a moment? And then your spouse looks it up on the map, and you discover that yeah, it’s this exit, plus maybe another 140 miles of dirt-road switchbacks in the opposite direction? And then you laugh, because who on earth would ever actually go there?

Well, that’s me. I am the one who goes there.

And I bring my sketchbook and a little box of paints with me. This is what I do. I’ve logged a lot of miles in my life, visiting as many patches of earth as possible and getting as much down on paper as I can. And for the first time, I’m putting these sketches out into the world. So here we are: I’ve collected all my drawings of crazy tourist traps and Paul Bunyan statues and hidden gems and panoramic vistas, and I’m sending them out like postcards. To you.

Welcome to my world—let’s hit the road, shall we?