I often do sketches in my free time between other projects. I decided to add them to this page on an ongoing basis.
Sketches
Midnight Ride
This is a fun painting I did a few years ago depicting the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere after a trip to Boston and several New England states.
Camping at Chatfield State Park
We like to start the summer season ‘test camping’ at the nearby state park, Chatfield State Park. It’s a nice reservoir just outside the Denver metro area along the foothills with trails and lake access.
Last year we were considering getting a new travel trailer but decided instead to invest in a spacious inflatable tent instead. There were several reasons for this:
- Relative Cost
- Ability to travel farther and faster without towing a trailer
- Ability to use more campsites
- The overall comfort level now attainable in these tents
So we bought an $1700 inflatable Panda tent from RBM and also made various purchases of cots, sleeping pads, a heater, a shower pump, and more. And I bought a new 60 quart Blue cooler that can keep ice and food frozen for multiple days and a 6 ft x 2 ft cargo carrier for my truck.
I decided to take a crack at building my own collapsable camping kitchen using plywood, pegboard, and PVC pipes. We bought a collapsable sink to set in it and pegboard hooks to hold utensils, as well as a light. It worked great in the trial camping trip.
We don’t often take the dogs with us, but they came with us on this camping trip and we all had fun.
We’ve got more camping planned for the coming months and years. We love the new tent and the possibilities it brings.
Zion National Park
My newest painting (literally just signed it) is of Zion National Park. I love this park and the trails are some of the best in the national park system.
This is an overlook viewpoint with Angel’s Landing and the Temple of Sinawava in the distance. Last time I was in the park my son and I hiked the Angel’s Landing trail. We’ve also hiked the Narrows, the Weeping Wall, along the Virgin River, and Observation Point.
Wildlife of the Caribbean
I’ve added new photos from our trip in October to the Bahamas to the Wildlife of the Caribbean page. We had a great time snorkeling there and were able to see a diverse array of fish species along the reef, as well as a green sea turtle and a conch. We also saw a heron and a curly-tailed lizard on land near the Atlantis resort. Check out the gallery…
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
In Colorado there are four national parks and numerous national monuments, historic sites, and recreation areas. Florissant Fossil Beds is a small national monument in central Colorado, just west of Pikes Peak.
Florissant Fossil Beds is a unique and enjoyable place in a relatively quiet spot in Colorado. This December we made our second ever visit to the monument and saw that it had a new visitor center and a more expansive trail system.
We were last at Florissant Fossil Beds in 2012. At the time Shelley was pregnant with our youngest son Evan, who was born in December of 2012, almost exactly twelve years prior to our most recent visit. For Evan, this was his first real chance to visit the monument even though he was phyically there the last time 🙂
We found that in the intervening years a nice new visitor center had been built and we took some time to peruse the exhibits inside, learning quite a lot about the history of the monument and the many fossils that have been found at the site. We learned for instance that more butterfly fossils have been found at Florissant than anywhere else in the world.
Once we stepped out of the visitor center we made our way to the primary attraction that makes Florissant famous: the great, fossilized redwood stumps.
Redwoods?
Yes, Fifty million years ago the climate of central Colorado was warmer and more humid, though the elevation was still quite high. The climatic conditions allowed huge redwood forests to thrive in what is now a dry, alpine environment.
The redwoods were fossilized by a volcanic eruption that happened about thirty miles from the current site of the monument. That volcano is now extinct, but the ash fall that accumulated at their base ensured that the stumps would remain to the present day.
There are several redwood stumps to be seen within a one mile perimeter of the visitor center. Two are only about one hundred feet away, covered by the protective roof. One of these is a triple trunk that originates from a single base.
To see the others, we took a leisurely stroll along the one mile Petrified Forest Loop Trail. Along the way is the most famous of the stumps, called the “Big Stump”. This stump still bears the rusted remnants of a saw blade from a century old attempt to cut into it. Fortunately that attempt failed and the stump remains for our enjoyment today.
I highly recommend visiting Florissant if you are in this area of Colorado. It’s quiet and relaxing compared to many of the more famous attractions in the state and quite interesting. For us it was also kind of fun to bring Evan there so close to his birthday to reminisce and give him the chance to appreciate the park.
Colorado has many terrific national park sites and we decided to try our best to visit as many as we can in 2025. We think we can visit all four national parks in 2025, and we’ll hit many of the national monuments as well. We’ll share our journeys as we go.
Fire Ant Cake
We made a red fire ant cake for my son Evan’s 12th birthday.
Sketching
When I need to break out of a rut I’ll do sketches. Here is one of a girl from a photo. I liked the angle of her pose.
Wildlife of South Carolina
I’ve updated the wildlife photography page with new photos! Click the link below to view the gallery:
Four Days in the Bahamas: Part 4
On our last day we would be departing the Bahamas for home in the afternoon. But we still had the morning to enjoy. I wanted to get out to Cove Beach and spend some of the early morning in the Aquaventure Park, and made my way to the there while the park was just opening.
My visit to Cove Beach and the Lagoon I included in the Aquaventure video I posted in the previous post. I was momentarily hesitant to get my swimming trunks wet and sandals full of sand on the day of departure, but I decided to just go for it. I could always put them in waterproof bags in our luggage and clean them up when we got home.
After walking through part of the park I returned to the room. I knew Shelley wanted to visit Dolphin Cay (and so did I) and I didn’t want to go there without her.
I returned to the room and we quickly packed up our suitcases and showered. We decided to go to Murray’s Deli again for breakfast but found that it was closed. So we stopped at the Starbucks in the resort and got some takeout coffee and breakfast sandwiches to eat at Dolphin Cay.
I mentioned previously that the Aquaventure Park is HUGE and there is about a mile walk to the Dolphin Cay from the Royal Towers. But we did find our way there with our breakfast items in hand to eat while enjoying the dolphins.
Dolphins are another animal that we both love seeing and watching. Dolphins are intelligent and playful. We were seated at a table a distance away (we weren’t inside the Dolphinarium itself but just outside it) but could watch the dolphins interacting with the trainers.
While we ate we pondered when we might come back again as a family. There’s a lot of fun things to do at Atlantis and it would just be a matter of when it made sense to fit it into our schedule. We would actually have to pay for our hotel room of course 🙁
We returned to the room, gathered our luggage and checked out of the hotel. We had a Welcome Pickups driver already scheduled to take us to the airport (which is about an hour away on the other side of New Providence Island).
We had a good conversation with the driver on the way back to the airport. As I mentioned in the prior post we talked to him about our experience at the restaurant in Nassau the prior day and he encouraged us to come back and visit the Bahamas again. We likely will in the coming years.
One more interesting note: The US customs processing line was in the Bahamas, so when we boarded the plane from the airport in Nassau we had already passed US immigration. When we landed in Denver we were free to go without waiting through customs. It was nice to do this first rather than have it waiting until arrival when we were already tired.
We really enjoyed our trip. October was a crazy month for us and by the time we returned we were glad to be home. But I felt like everything that we did, with the week in South Carolina and Georgia, followed quickly thereafter with the Bahamas getaway was worthwhile no matter how crazy the schedule became. Sometimes you just have to take advantage of opportunities when they come and throw caution to the wind.
Our 11-year-old son was fine while we were gone (though he missed us and got bored) and my parents were able to get him to school, etc. Our 18-year-old son also helped and we felt good knowing they could step up for us when we needed help.
We don’t have a lot planned now for a while. The economy has affected Shelley’s job and we aren’t sure how long she will remain there. We are just planning a relatively easy roadtrip in the summer of 2025 as of now and leaving more complicated travel plans for the following years. There are a lot of places we want to visit or revisit. Its just a matter of time and opportunity.
I had no idea we’d be taking this trip to the Bahamas at the start of 2024. It came out of nowhere. We didn’t win a million dollars, but we got a free trip and that was a great win by itself.