Backpacking in Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness

Matt planned an awesome backpacking trip into the Black Ridge Canyons Wilderness this weekend to check out some rarely-visited natural arches above Mee Canyon, within McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area. We invited our friends Whit and Sarah, and we set out about noon on Saturday for a nine mile hike into the arches. We didn’t see another soul during the whole trip, and we were lucky enough to spot five different arches. We also found a patch of huge boulders on the ground that had obviously recently fallen from up high.

We camped out on a rim above Mee Canyon. It’s amazing the way everything tastes so good after hiking 9 miles with a 35-pound pack on your back!

Even though none of these arches have formal names, I decided to call this one “Teardrop.”

Historic Exploration

I went to the east coast with my mom last week. She won a Commissioner’s Citation, the highest honor a civil servant can get in the Social Security Administration. We had a great time at the award ceremony, but my favorite part of the trip was visiting some historic U.S. landmarks.

We walked all around downtown Baltimore and found an historic Methodist church, completed in 1872. It was named the most significant building in Baltimore by the American Institute of Architects. The detail and craftsmanship of the architecture is so beautiful. You don’t get to experience this kind of history out west.

When we finished with our business in Baltimore, we drove over to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of the deadliest, bloodiest battle in the Civil War. In only three days’ time, almost 60,000 men died on both sides of the conflict. They said the river ran red with blood. The image above is a memorial to one of the regiments from New York. There were monuments all over the battlefield, remembering all the dead and wounded from the fight.

We also visited Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Too bad the light was so bad that day, because none of my photos came out! I really loved Independence Hall because that is where the Declaration of Independence was signed, and where the U.S. Constitution was written. What an amazing place!

I Dreamt of Things...

I dreamt that I had to give a big presentation with a bunch of other women in an auditorium full of people. We put together a broadway-style show complete with brightly colored costumes, song, and dance. We sang our lungs out about womens’ power and strength. Our big finale was a Cirque du Soleil swinging acrobatic performance on ropes above the audience. After the presentation, Tom Cruise came up to us and complimented our work, saying he never realized women could be so powerful.

Dinosaur Bones

Yesterday I spent the morning on a tour of the Trail Through Time, an area within McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area that is riddled with 150 million year old dinosaur fossils. I had been out to this trail before, and despite the interpretive signs, I still had difficulty identifying the fossils. With the help of Zeb Miracle, our tour guide, seeing the bones was much easier.

We saw vertebrae from the neck of a Camarasaurus dinosaur. Just a section of the neck bones was about 20 feet long! The bones embedded in the rock have a slightly grayer color and are smoother than the rest of the rock. The best part was that, unlike in a museum, we were allowed to touch the fossils to get a sense of the size of these creatures.

We learned that this area of the Colorado desert, now known as Rabbit Valley, was once a lush wetland where dinosaurs and other animals came to drink. It’s hard to imagine that this dry desert was a jungle millions of years ago!

My Grandma’s Vintage Fabrics

My Grandma, Violet Foushee, recently sold her house and moved into a retirement community, so the family was there trying to help her get rid of things and get organized. She has been quilting longer than I have been alive, and over all that time she collected quite an extensive variety of fabrics to use in her projects. There was fabric piled in every corner of the house; several closets were stacked with samples from floor to ceiling and under every bed were rolls of old upholstry cloth. I was lucky enough to commandeer a big boxful of my favorite samples from her collection before she had to downsize.


I recently began to use some of these fabrics in my paintings. I’m looking forward to getting about 15 of my recent paintings professionally photographed in the next month or two so that I can post them here for your viewing pleasure.

My Sister’s Tribute to Our Dad

Ok, so when our Dad passed away almost 7 years ago, I wanted to get a tattoo. I don’t know what it is about big life events... but it seems like a good time to do something drastic, perhaps something big, but definitely something meaningful. I could never think of the perfect design for a permanent tattoo, so I never got one. This spring, my sister Lindsey sent me a photo of her new tattoo. It was genius! I wished I’d thought of it myself.

The body of the angel is the letter “V” representing my dad’s first initial. Then she drew wings on either side of the “V” and put a golden halo at the top. It’s so spot-on... Dad is our guardian angel, if you believe in that sort of thing. I’d at least like to think he’s still out there keeping an eye on things for us.