Oh for a Road Trip...

Call it cabin fever or winter boredom, but when I was working in iPhoto this morning, I caught sight of some summer vacation pictures and I couldn't help clicking through them and reliving our late August road trip taking Chelsea out to BYU.  

I love a good road trip.  Maybe it harks back to my childhood when we drove from Wisconsin to Texas every year to visit relatives, but I don't mind the hours of watching the road pass under my wheels.

 

On those Texas trips, I remember the peacock chenille bedspreads hanging on the clotheslines outside of souvenir shops in the Ozarks, but now we head west instead of south and that opens up new sights for my travelers eyes.

Crossing the mighty Mississip.

Water towers that look like coffee pots.

The Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota.

And the covered with corn

Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

We counted at least 75 Wall Drug signs.

The incredibly good Badlands.

...and you know if we stopped at the Spam Museum,

we're not gonna pass up Wall Drug!

Mt. Rushmore inspired us all.

The Switchbacking, narrow roads

of the Needles Highway in South Dakota

did nothing for my fear of heights.

The pigtail bridges.

One lane tunnels blasted through

solid granite before 1922.

Beautiful Sylvan Lake.

What a treat to hear Chelsea play
the rickety grand piano in the historic
Sylvan Lake Lodge where we stayed.

Getting stuck in a bison jam.

Feeding carrots to a band of friendly burros in Custer State Park.

oops...

After all the sightseeing along the way, we did finally accomplish our mission of getting Chelsea out to school.  Thanks for taking my little memory lane road trip with me.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get a blanket and turn up the thermostat.

Once Upon a Time, I was a Designer

I am unearthing more long forgotten possessions while cleaning out my sewing room closet.  By the way, it is a large closet.  I live in an old house and this closet could be a small bathroom.  And that closet was stuffed - literally.  When my oldest son and his wife came home for Christmas last year, we put a bed in the sewing room and shoved all manner of things into that closet, pushed a bulletin board up against the avalanche and heaved the door closed.  Everyone was directed not to open that door on pain of death.  While I am cleaning out the closet, the contents have filled the rest of the sewing room.  I should have taken a "before" picture.  You would have been disappointed in me.  I am ashamed.  However, I am making progress towards an efficient, highly labeled and sorted, organized closet.

Anyway, I digress.  What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, long forgotten possessions.  I found my markers from college!  My Prisma Color markers used for my design projects that stood upright in a neat little spinning carousel.  Every Interior Design major was required to buy a set.  I think they were around $70 back then.  Smelling their marker fragrance as I opened the caps to test them transported me right back to the early 80s at BYU.  Six of the markers actually still had juice!

Finding my markers took me on a mini reminiscence.  I wanted to see my renderings from college.  I knew they were in the back of my bedroom closet in their large black portfolios.  I dug them out. (Another closet to be cleaned.)  They were a little water damaged from when the roofers didn't tarp the house well enough during a rain storm, but that's quite another story.  Anyway, there were my projects.  I remember many a night burning the midnight oil to meet a deadline drawing at my drafting table while my roommate slept.  I photographed some of them to share with you.

A monochromatic project... a kitchen on plain old fodder.

A more traditional sitting area.

A formal dining room sketch in pencil.

I loved this house.

A living area in that house.

A converted shed in chalk and marker.

Looks like a place my artist, garden-loving, mother-in-law would like.

I don't remember doing this sepia of the house where we lived in college.  This was an old four-square on the corner of 5th west and University Avenue.  Our apartment was the upper right portion of the building.  Two apartments on each floor and one in the basement.

With this project, I tried to go against type and do something ultra modern.  Is the grey and mauve color scheme a dead giveaway that it was the mid-eighties?

A ski lodge... see the white snowy mountains out the window?

The kitchen in the ski lodge.

A country townhouse.  In the 80s, American Country was starting to take over.  Everything was Nantucket and stencils and grape vine and mini print wallpaper.

Gotta love the "Lotus" chair in pencil.

And if this doesn't scream 80s, I don't know what does.
Busy, busy, busy.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane with me.  It was fun remembering those long lost projects.  And lest you think I am an artist - which I most definitely am not - these renderings and elevations were drawn with the help of a perspective grid.  There are lots of tricks that they teach you in school.