The Watercolor

For Eva and Kristen's Paint Party Friday I am sharing my watercolor finish!  This is the first one I have done in about 46 years!  I usually work in oils, and have only recently gotten back to painting after a long break.  I will also show you the photo I worked from.  This is a waterfall and stone chapel wall at Festival Hill in Round Top, TX.

Five Random Things From the Trip

Well, here are five things related to our Coastal trip last month for Tricky's Five on Friday and Tanya's Willy Nilly Friday Five:

1.  Two more awesome Art Deco bridges...

This one is over Coos Bay

 A little Wikipedia info:

The largest city along the Oregon Coast is Coos Bay—population 16,000^[3]—in Coos County on the South Coast. U.S. Route 101 is the primary highway from Astoria to Brookings, and is known for its scenic overlooks of the Pacific Ocean.

2.  Many towns in Oregon have strong logging histories.  From the past, a couple of photos:

and photos I took on the fly of logging companies we saw...

3.  A boxcar used in World War I given to Oregon by the French National Railroads.  We discovered this memorial at the Visitor Center in Coos Bay....

4.  We had a big picture window at our motel overlooking Coos Bay...

5.  And dinner...we wanted some delicious seafood and drove back down to Charleston and found this wonderful place, Portside...and another big picture window overlooking the water.  The food was excellent!

Our fried mushroom appetizers

Russell's fish and chips

My crab-stuffed jumbo shrimp

And we even had dessert!

A Quail of a Time!

At first we got fleeting glimpses of the baby California Quail with their parents in the tall grass.  No decent photos when the were really small.  Then...

Joining Stewart's Wild Bird Wednesday and Anni's Bird d'Pot on Saturday:

we started seeing them in the open areas of the back yard, and then one day I noticed from the window that they had come up onto the little shelf where I put the seed feeder and were eating from that.  I took pictures from the livingroom window at first...

One parent was checking out the deck

When I get photos from the bedroom window, the angle on the double-paned glass is never very good and they always have a "dim" look.

The chicks are so cute!

More of the Trip

For Mersad's Through My Lens and Susan's Outdoor Wednesday I continue with our trip...These first two photos were taken at the overlook where we watched the sea lions (will be on an upcoming post) in Charleston, Oregon near Coos Bay.

These photos were taken further up the coast of Oregon at another overlook...

The lighthouse that appears in the distance in the above photo.

A pretty little beach there.

A (not-so-good) video of the rocks above...

wildflowers growing in a rock face

Two Barns

I was thrilled when we moved here to get to see barns everywhere across Central Oregon.  I haven't posted one in a while, so here are two this week for Tom's Barn Collective:

Winged Critters

For Eileen's Saturday's Critters, some shots from our recent trip:

I gave the crow a chip, so when we tried to leave....

And here is the phone photo I got of an unusual visitor to he deck.  I read that Central Oregon was "carpeted" with California Tortoise Shell Butterflies about three weeks ago.  I only saw two, but then I can't get out and hike, and frequent places with wildflowers...but this one came to take a drink of nectar from my hummingbird feeder!