past the mountains

 

I took a long-awaited weekend getaway with my pod of 4 to Soap Lake, WA recently (pre-snowstorm). The idea was to get out of the gloom of the Puget Sound cloud basin for a few days and get some vitamin D and fresh air! It's always dazzling to clear the Cascade mountains and find yourself in a completely new dry, open landscape. Shelby brought along a houseplant (seen between the front seats) for our journey, which actually felt very comforting. 

 

We hiked up Steamboat Rock one morning. The Columbia River Gorge is always so stunning. While sketching these scenes, I wished to be a bird 15,000 years ago, to witness the great flood: when the Missoula ice dam broke and blasted about 500 cubic miles of water (!!!) through this landscape.

Later I sketched my pod friends back at the cabin, where we took a singular bath in the Soap Lake water piped in from nearby.

 

On the way back to Seattle, Alex gave us a short tour of Vantage, where he used to rock climb. I sketched some climbers scaling the basalt columns in pencil & watercolored it at home. Then we got stuck in Snoqualmie Pass traffic for two hours and I reflected on the dramatic change of landscape (dry, open & sunny to a snowstorm in a high altitude forest) that just an hour's drive gets you in Washington.

Eastern Washington

We went to Richland to visit relatives last weekend. The drive home on I-90 was the most stunning in the 40 years I've been making that trek. Everytime I looked up from my computer, the scene had changed. First blue sky and snow dusted mountains of the eastern dessert, the bright blue Columbia, then white out near Ellensburg, blue fog over Alder lake, sun piercing the fog and backlighting the trees of the Cascades. I couldn't resist setting up my mobile studio and making very quick sketches. They don't do reality justice, but I had a lot of fun. 

                 

       

I also snagged the Richland Icon - circa American Grafiti