St. George, Utah

This was the last day of the art exhibit celebrating Zion National Park's 100th anniversary. We went down to St. George to see it. It had two parts. On the ground floor was a juried exhibition of new works created by contemporary artists specifically for the centennial celebration. Valerie had submitted works to the jury and had not been selected. So, we were wondering what kind of pictures got in. In addition to the usual stuff from painters whose work I don't tend to like—for example, Bonnie Posselli and Jim Jones—there were a handful of very strong paintings from some unfamiliar artists. My favorite was probably Salt Lake painter Anne Penrod's vivid abstraction entitled The Road Less Travelled. It was like she had done Maynard Dixon one better with her strong blue shadows and bright blocks of color.

Speaking of Maynard Dixon, the second floor was taken up with an historic exhibit of works from a variety of artists starting in 1870. Aside from a very nice little painting by Franz Bischoff (and a watercolor from Wallace Lee), I thought the historic part of the show served only to highlight the remarkable skill of Dixon and his reported friend LeConte Stewart. Dixon and Stewart stood out as two of the best painters in the building and it would have been fun to sit with them, circa 1935, to see them strut their stuff.

http://annepenrod.com/welcome.html

Parowan, Utah

When I was guiding in Idaho a few years ago, I remember watching a golden eagle strike a flying chukkar in mid-air. The eagle followed the crumpled chukkar to the ground and began to eat it. I didn't have time to watch, but I was reminded of that incident today when we came home from church. Right in front of our house, a small hawk--a coopers or sharpshin?--had knocked a mourning dove out of the air. The two birds had just landed in the street when I pulled up. I drove up next to them and looked down. The hawk cocked me a weather eye, but otherwise refused to move. As I turned to park, it carried the dove off the street in two short hops. It was obvious that it couldn't haul it away. So, despite our presence, it settled down next to Ellen's swing and began to pluck the dove. With the feathers out of the way, it ate the breast, head, and neck before settling down to rest. Altogether, it hung around for probably two hours--even with me running the chainsaw. When it was gone there were mostly just bones and feathers.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/ParowanUtah#

Pipe Spring, Arizona

We drove down through Hurricane and Colorado City to Pipe Spring. It took about two hours. That's not bad, but I don't think we'll go back. The Spring has a somewhat interesting history and a very nicely restored Mormon pioneer structure to tour, but that is about it. The whole visit takes an hour. I guess I wouldn't pay $10 to go in there again. The old boy working in the gift shop did point out that the road to the cane beds actually connected to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes road. So we tried it. It would have been fine in the Chev, but it was pretty rough and muddy for the Sable. Fortunately only three or four miles of it were unsurfaced. We then paid another $6 to go into the State Park. Again, not worth it. We basically paid for parking when we later found free parking a mile up the road. The dunes are beautiful, but it is an ATV sacrifice area where the motors are forever roaring. We drove out to Highway 89, up through Carmel Junction, past Maynard Dixon's old studio, and over the mountain on Highway 14--another 200 mile loop.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/PipeSpringArizona#

Escalante, Utah

We've left Escalante now. Our new place is at 200 East and 300 North in Parowan. But before we left town we were staying at Ms. Sharol's. She has a very hospitable house south of town just under the Escalante Rim. One Sunday in December, I noticed a couple of coyotes chasing the rabbits that Ms. Sharol likes to feed. They hunted one down in the rabbitbrush on the north side of the house until it got away when they weren't looking. They gave up on that one and circled back to the south side. I couldn't see them anymore, but the next thing I knew there were a couple of crows in the pinyon by the north side rabbitbrush. "They got one," I thought. After a while when the crows were gone, I walked down there and searched around until I found it. Nothing but a couple of tufts of fur and some blood in the snow. (And I thought food came from the grocery.)

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/EscalanteUtah02#