24 States in 27 Days - Day 18:

Oct. 27th, 2012, Saturday:  I sat outside the next morning, where it was still warm enough to not need a jacket and enjoyed a bowl of cereal with almond milk, while watching a guy with two boys float by in small motor boat fishing, while I waited for Brad to finish showering. 

He returned, made coffee, joined me for cereal then we packed things up. 

We headed to hwy.177 then stopped at a market to see if they had any highlighters. All they had were boxes of beer! We zigged our way through beautiful farmland, eventually connecting to I-15 veering south around Gettysburg where looking at the map we noticed we’d completed a figure 8 in our travels. From there we went south on 15 to Maryland. 

It was still warm and in the upper 60’s. Stopping at Catoctin Fruit Orchard we admired the flowers, Brad collected seeds and I took pics. 

We left with a delicious jug of fresh squeezed apple juice. Our next stop, purely by accident was Frederick Maryland. Brad loved Frederick - we both did - it was very historic, with lots of cool art, signs, and murals. We parked downtown, fed the meter and went for a walk. 

Brad recognized several signs and murals from his sign trade magazines. We had fun trying on vintage clothes, chatting with gallery owners and getting the scoop on where the best murals and other galleries were. We drove across town to the local art center where we’d heard there were more murals to discover. While purchasing a hat, we were told about a particular angel mural that could be viewed through a window at the art center, where it looked proportionally correct. It was painted to look right from the window, but skewed when viewed while standing directly in front of it. Of course we had to go check that out! 

Viewing the Angel through the window at The Delaplaine Visual Arts Center

Viewing the Angel standing right in front of it. 

We spotted several other trompe l’oeil images along the canal walkway below the art center.

Frederick was a real cool discovery - one of our favorites of our road trip. It was very hard to be so close to Washington DC though, and not stop there, but we knew that’d be a multiple-day adventure just in itself. 

We also were disappointed to have to head west sooner than we’d wanted, and not fulfill our wish to dip our toes into the Atlantic, but Hurricane Sandy was making its way towards the east coast, and we knew we should avoid its arrival. 

We kept going south on I-340 crossing the Potomac River into Virginia and West Virginia, all within seconds from each other on that stretch of highway. Stopping, we walked back onto the bridge over the Potomac, spotting several groups of rafters floating the river. 

We also spied some poison ivy, looking glorious in its autumn splendor… 

We continued on 340 as it became more of a backroad through West Virginia, then back into Virginia. We crossed over the beautiful glassy Shenandoah River multiple times, as the sun set and it became too dark for photos. We debated about finding somewhere to camp, but decided to keep going, and in Elkton we turned onto hwy. 33, then onto I-81 where we zipped along ‘til we stopped at a rest area, choosing to sleep there that night. It had a sparkling clean restroom, and soon we had our curtains up in the truck canopy, the cooler and bags moved into the front seat, ready to nod off early. Unfortunately it was too early - we were too warm again and the place was noisy with truck generators, the coming and going of cars with loud people, crying babies... not the best place to sleep, that’s for sure! It made for a long night.

24 States in 27 Days - Day 2:

Oct. 11th 2012 we awoke to sun streaming in our foggy canopy windows - we hadn’t left a window open, so condensation had collected inside, not unlike sleeping in a tent. Neither one of us wanted to get up, thinking it was pretty cold outside, but Brad finally got brave and opened our back tailgate window. The sunshine was warm, and though it was chilly it wasn’t nearly as cold as we’d imagined. 

In the background you can see the steam rising from the hot spring pond.

Here's the hot pond, showing the office across the way and the bath house behind the pond shed.  

We had breakfast in the small kitchen - I heated pizza and Brad had granola, while a friendly orange tabby cat hung out and visited with us. 

This photo shows the cabins available to rent at Crystal Crane Hot Springs, the bath house, and behind the cabins, the hot spring pond.

Back on the road, we soon discovered we were already off course, not on hwy. 20, but somehow the night before, while in Burns, we’d missed a turn and were on hwy. 78 instead! After laughing that we were already lost we headed north & were soon back on 20, eventually sliding into Vale Oregon. This place was “Mural Town”, so of course we had to stop and go for a photo walk. 

A drive-by photo of Snake River reflections in Idaho.

From there we buzzed through Idaho, taking I-84, I-86 & I-15, returning to backroads on hwy. 30 east. Looking at the map earlier, we’d seen Lava Hot Springs off hwy. 30 which intrigued us. Again it was dark when we drove into the town of Lava Hot Springs, completely unaware of what to expect. We had to stop and explore so we parked across from what looked like a bustling giant hot spring swimming pool. We walked down to take a look at the pool and the Portneuf river running through town, took a quick stroll around the small downtown area, then not seeing anywhere we wanted to stop we soon were back on the road, thinking the next town might be a bit less resort-like. Soda Springs Idaho was another small town to explore - in the dark. Finding a quiet, dark street near the pioneer museum across from a couple of churches we pulled in for our first night of “stealth” camping. Quietly slipping our 2 duffles and cooler into the cab of the truck, we quickly climbed into the back, put up our curtains, and soon were sleeping - as best as we could with trains and the occasional vehicle slipping past. 

From Start to Finish

This past weekend we painted a billboard.

Several of us from Portland, Corvallis and Eugene gathered at the Oregon Country Fair and started painting Friday. When installed the sign will be visible from highway 126, the coast highway connecting Eugene and Florence, on the property of the Oregon Country Fair. On Friday, the sign looked like what you see above. My daughter painted with us Friday and Saturday - above she's just starting to paint the top yellow border. When we arrived, the background sky had already been sprayed and the design had been "pounced" on top. ("pounce: a fine powder, often of charcoal, used in transferring a design through a perforated pattern.") The artwork was created by Justin Riede, a terrific sign artist that lives in Portland. He was basing his design on vintage fruit labels. If you'd like to see any photos larger, right click on the photo and open it in a new window or tab.

I'm helping to paint the top yellow border with my daughter (above) and another sign artist, Pat Carson is working on the lettering. In the photo below I'm working with both my daughter and my husband! How cool is that?!

The rest of the photos show the progression as more and more paint is applied, all without a lot of direction aside from the original colored in sketch. Many times we'd stand back and discuss what color might work here or there, whether a shadow was needed, was there a light source? (yes - top left) if so, then shadows needed to be related to that light source...

Below is a group shot of the painters on Sunday - my daughter is missing since she had to return to college to study for finals.


Here is Justin Riede, the sign designer/artist applying imitation gold leaf:


Below, Glen Hitzeman is painting some of the lettering.


Brad, my husband is shading the drop shadows.


José Solis, is painting some of the landscape. We enjoyed working together since we both have a looser painting style which compliments the other sign artist's linear painting style!


Here I'm on the other side of the sign from José.


The finished billboard! Truly a group project, sporting multiple layers of paint, aluminum leaf stars, glazed imitation gold leaf, a removable date panel, and lots of cooperative artistic talent. Look for it on hwy. 126 - it should be going up this coming Wednesday.