And America Was Closed

I've been away on a well needed holiday. As you can tell from the title of this post, I've just been to the States during the government shutdown. This led to a couple of minor disappointments. Our raft trip down the Colorado River had to be cancelled as Grand Canyon National Park was shut. As were the other iconic national parks in the area which we were going to visit. Also, our planned day's walking in Yosemite had to be switched to Mammoth.

However, I'm not complaining for two reasons. The financial problems that this shutdown will have caused for a lot of low paid government employees is long term and damaging. Having to change travel plans is not. Once the shutdown happened, I got on the internet and checked out state parks. It didn't take me long to work out new and interesting places to visit. If the national parks hadn't been shut we wouldn't have visited Snow Canyon in Utah, or have discovered Sedona, Arizona, and its lovely state parks.

Here are some of my sketches from my trip...

On The Caltrain

Snow Canyon State Park, Utah

Red Rock State Park, Arizona

A Day Out In San Francisco

Waiting For A Seat At The Counter

The Terrace, Station House Cafe

The last sketch was done at lunch in Point Reyes Station, California, a lovely small town north of San Francisco. Looking around the main street, I found a craft shop selling some of the burnished pit fired ceramics that has been inspiring me recently. I resisted the urge to buy any, partly because it can be hard to transport ceramics intact. The main reason is that I'm trying to create work in a similar style, and my house is already filling up with my own experiments!