Fall is fully here. With the darker mornings I’m having a REALLY hard time getting up to hike before work (my norm) but that is leaving me lots of time for making art. Both are vital to my happiness, but I hope my health and fitness will survive with less activity and more time sitting on my butt!
Viewing entries in
Chelan
Lots of landscapes on tap lately. Always inspired by our valley and it's surrounding vistas. I might sometimes lose the mojo when creating, but I can honestly say it's not for lack of interesting views.
Once again we're in "fire season" in central/eastern Washington (and much of the western US as well) and we all wait for news on how friends and family are faring this time around. No good comes from any of it -- except maybe the rallying of strangers to help each other. That's truly something to witness -- that willingness to help no matter how daunting or dangerous.
It also changes the skies. Smoky and grey during the day, we lose our beautiful blue of summer, but gain amazing sunsets. It's one thing we don't see very often, those gorgeous reds and pinks of more tropical sunsets. So I'll paint them while I can.
As always, you can click on any image for purchasing and print options.
Did you Eastern Washingtonians know there is a "pass" between the upper Entiat Valley and Twenty-Five-Mile Creek in Chelan that goes up and over those incredible mountains? Called Shady Pass, it is "rustic" to say the least (dirt, bumpy and narrow.) It felt like we were on top of the world. We intended to drive to the top, park, then hike to the summit of Crow Hill which sits almost 7,000 vertical feet directly above Lake Chelan. We were thwarted, however, by snow. In late July. Snow. July. We hiked around a bit, as much as we could (which included one gnarly hill that, at 6,800 feet, had us gasping like mad and our hearts pounding through our chests. Yes, I said gnarly. I grew up in the 80s.) Some of the views below. That water below is Lake Chelan. If you know how big Lake Chelan is, you can tell from this photo how high we were.