Historic Route 66

Rather than going back and inserting some photos into the story about our road trip, I decided to just add some photos this way. As we traveled west we looked for some of the Route 66 icons that we had not visited before.

The first detour was in Shamrock, TX, to the site of the art deco Conoco gas station and the adjoining U Drop Inn. The cafe was closed, but the gas station houses the local Chamber of Commerce and we enjoyed a brief visit with the nice ladies there while we bought a few souvineers.A surprise find was Russell's Diner and Car Museum just over the TX/NM border on Route 40 which has replaced the old two-lane Route 66. We had lunch at the diner (new building, but made to look vintage) and then took in the wonderful museum. What a treat!
In Albuquerque we located two Route 66 restaurants on Rt. 66. The diner has been in it's present location all along, but the Malt Shop has recently moved to a new home. Both are a trip down memory lane!

5000 MILES!!!

Okay, maybe it wasn't quite 5000 miles, but it was well over 4000 miles. We are back from a 17 day road trip that took us to Phoenix and back. Our destination was a 5 day Road Scholar Program featuring golf and Arizona culture.
We left home on February 1st amid news of a devastating storm that was supposed to bring snow from Texas to Chicago and beyond and there was threat of large scale ice damage through Oklahoma and Missouri. I had joked to our friends that we can predict storms, because whatever date we chose to set out on a car trip, there is bound to be bad weather forecast! This was no exception.
As it turned out, we were lucky that first day, because the storm was nasty, but it was well west of us. We did have mostly clouds and about an hour of rain west of Nashville, but we easily made our destination of Little Rock, AR, and didn't see any snow. It was cold, however, so we skipped our planned visit to Hot Springs and instead toured the Clinton Presidential Library. That was a treat. We had an excellent docent, a retired history teacher who knows Clinton and she was able to share lots of interesting stories with us. Because of the frigid weather, there were very few people there vying for her attention.
By a little after noon, we were heading west again on Rt. 40 and almost as soon as we hit the Oklahoma border we ran into the remnants of the storm that dumped over a foot of snow on the state. I don't believe the entire state of OK owns a plow, because the highway was rutted with snow and ice and we had a pretty treacherous 150 miles at 30 MPH... pretty much just us and the tractor trailers. We did make it to Oklahoma City, but then had a bit of trouble finding a restaurant that was open. Apparently the whole city was paralyzed by the snowfall and cooks and waitstaff couldn't make it in to work, so many restaurants couldn't open or closed early.
Day three brought us west to Albuquerque on remarkably clear roads. It was sunny and clear, but still very cold. We were glad we brought our heavy coats for sight-seeing in Albuquerque on day 4. We went up the tram to get a nice panoramic view of the area and hiked at the Petroglyph National Monument. We also visited a couple of Route 66 Diners/Malt Shops on Historic 66. We didn't see any of those hot air balloons that Albuquerque is famous for... I guess it was just too cold, but we did spend a little time and a little money in Old Town.
The next day we traveled to Phoenix and once we headed south from Rt. 40 which is desert and mesa country, we ran into some interesting terrain, some forested areas and finally some pretty mountains as we approached Phoenix. Actually, we were headed to Mesa, where we spent the next 6 mights at the Dobson Ranch Best Western.
We had an opportunity to visit the Desert Botanical Gardens which were really nice before meeting our Road Scholar group on Sunday evening.
From Sunday through Friday morning, we were pretty fully scheduled with golf at three different courses, two 3 hour group golf lesson sessions, classes on Arizona history, culture, creepy-crawlers, Indians, and golf. We had about 25 in our group and Russ and I were happy to be partnered for golf sessions with Betty from Illinois and a couple of the RS coordinators.
Friday afternoon, 2/11, brought us to Tucson, the first stop on our way home. We toured the mission San Xavier del Boc, and did a drive through the Saguaro National Park, but the real highlight of the day was spending time with my mother's girlhood friend, also a Dorothy, who has lived in Tucson since about 1955! She is a delightful lady who had lots of interesting stories about her move from Buffalo to the southwest with her young family all those years ago, to reminisces about growing up next door to my grandparents and great grandparents. She insisted that we have dinner with her and her friend Pat who was also visiting from out of town. So that was a pleasant and unexpected treat!
The next day was mostly spent in the car. We did have an interesting conversation with a Navajo silversmith who was selling his wares at a rest stop somewhere in AZ or NM and I bought Russ a bolo for his collection. Our destination for the night was Pecos, TX.
The next two nights were spent in Dallas, TX. We enjoyed the Dallas Botanical Gardens on Highland Lake and we also toured the very well done museum at the Kennedy assassination site. That certainly stirred up memories.
The next night was spent at Meridian, MI, enroute to our final sight-seeing stop, Birmingham, AL. In Birmingham, we visited yet another Botanical Garden (wonderful Japanese garden area) and also Vulcan Park which includes a nice museum about Birmingham history and the largest cast iron statue in the world, Vulcan, which overlooks the city. Vulcan stands on a pedestal and there is an observation platform at the top of the pedestal. It's really a nice attraction and we had a wonderful view on a clear, sunny day. We had hoped we'd have time to go to the Civil Rights Institute across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church, but that will have to wait until the next visit.
From Birmingham, it was a reasonably short day of travel to get home.

Alliances

So much for resolutions! Here it is nearly a month after my last blog! Oh, well... I won't offer any excuses.

It's always exciting when I actually finish a project. This is my submission for this year's contest at "The Alliance for American Quilts."

I was able to use a piece of fabric that I created at John C. Campbell when I took that workshop on silk dyeing last spring. I had dyed some silk organza and fused it to white silk to see how the colors changed when I overlapped them. I had chosen pretty much a "primary" color palate, as I recalled an exercise in elementary school where we used a compass to draw a color wheel, allowing some of the arcs to intersect so two colors could blend to form another. I also included some greens, as I had been working on greens for another project during that workshop. Anyway, the piece of fabric has been hiding in my stash and I was delighted when I discovered that it was large enough to use for this project which had to be 16 inches square. Silk is a beautiful fabric to work with and the colors are brilliant as the fabric has a natural sheen. I embellished it with buttons and beads.

The theme of the competition is pretty broad... Alliances: People ~ Patterns ~ Passion. I think it's not too great a stretch to consider color blending to be an alliance. Anyway, if you want to learn more about "The Alliance for American Quilts," their website is: http://www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/.

Resolutions

Since I shared my blog address in all my holiday letters, it occurred to me that a good resolution would be to blog a bit more often. Maybe then my friends would get in the habit of checking in on me frequently in 2011. So here's a new post to keep you coming back!

After our return home from Florida, there was a "flurry" of activity with pre-Christmas social events and then the things I needed to do so that our Christmas would happen... getting the holiday letters and packages put in the mail and doing a little holiday grocery shopping and cooking.

And then there was the real "flurry" on Christmas morning... as in snow flurry. The snow started at daybreak and then it just continued, relentlessly, until we had 9 inches of it! I did NOT move south to have a white Christmas! Well, we are now 5 days past that storm and a lot of the snow is gone. Hooray!

One of the things I did while I was housebound was to work on some pincushions I am making for an event I'm going to in January, so I thought I'd show those to you. They are made of felt and they're fun to embellish with embroidery. They are much more cheerful than the winter scene I could have photographed out my front door on Christmas day!

Happy 2011!!!

Things are heating up!

We're not exactly sweating, but the Florida temperatures have turned more seasonal for the second half of our week here. Russ is used to hearing me say, "I love the 70's!" He's never sure if I'm talking about the decade or the temperature range, but in reality, I like both!

On Wednesday, we met our friends Nancy and David at Dixie Crossroads in Titusville for a great seafood lunch and a few hours of equally delightful conversation. Together we went to the Enchanted Forest preserve for a stroll along an abandoned and grown over canal. We didn't see much wildlife, but along the trail were these

interesting "Swiss cheese" rocks that were unearthed when they dug the canal. The holes were made by naturally occurring carbonic acid eating away the limestone over tens of thousands of years. Or at least I think that's what the interpretive sign said.

Yesterday we went golfing at the Kissimmee Golf Club. I didn't shoot any birdies with my golf clubs, but I did shoot some with my camera. The course was filled with lots of interesting birds, many of them pretty tame and willing to pose. It skirts an airport that has a "war bird" collection and so in addition to the real birdlife, there were lots of vintage planes flying overhead! It was an interesting spot! In fact we liked it so much, we made tee times to play again today.

On Tuesday we spent a few hours in Winter Park, a nice, upscale community. We visited the Morse Museum which was just spectacular. It houses the largest collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany art in the world. The collection is magnificent and the story of how it was acquired is equally fascinating. What a treasure! Thank you to my bee friend, Carolyn, for suggesting that. We had also hoped to take the scenic boat cruise there, but the cold weather on that day had closed it down. Perhaps we'll get back now that it's warmer.

Last night we went to Celebration, FL, a Disney planned community near Lake Buena Vista. During December they have hourly snowfalls in the town square, and last night it was finally warm enough to enjoy that. I expected cold, snow machine snow, but this snow was more like shaving cream. They also have an "ice" rink, but the surface was some kind of solid other than ice. It was really pretty and festive and the kids were enjoying rolling around in the shaving cream snow that accumulated on the street.

Florida... where all the orange juice is frozen this morning!

I really need to get back to blogging, so here's a post from Sunny Florida.

You might know... we make the decision to make a December trip south and last night there was record cold here in Orlando! Temps dipped into the teens and even with the sunshine, the wind yesterday made it feel downright chilly.

Don't feel too sorry for me, though. We are staying at a beautiful Hilton resort (thanks, Ed and Carol!) and our accommodations and the

amenities here are amazing... so it's not really an inconvenience to have to stay inside more than we'd planned. Here are a couple of shots showing our apartment.

And thanks to my "bee ladies" I have a list of indoor attractions to explore in the area.

Yesterday we had a nice day. After battling downtown Orlando traffic to get to a Radio Shack so I could replace the camera battery charger I forgot (why do I keep forgetting things?), we headed to Edgewater to see Russ' cousin's recently purchased house and spend the afternoon and early evening with them. It was really nice to see their beautiful home, catch up with their family news, and Russ and Bruce spent a couple hours going through some geneological stuff that Russ has collected and shared lots of old family stories. We had a nice dinner at McKenna's before heading back to Orlando.

Blue Ridge Parkway Quilt

I'm just back from my final visit to the Asheville Quilt Show. From my point of view, it seems like it has been a great success, as usual.

A highlight for me was the showing of the now completed Blue Ridge Parkway 75th Anniversary Quilt. You might remember an earlier blog where I showed you the lady slipper block that I made for the quilt, using some silk fabrics that I hand-dyed when I went to John C. Campbell Folk School this spring. Well, it was an honor for me to be part of this Asheville Quilt Guild project. The quilt will be donated to the BRP Folk Art Center this September and, though I may be just a tad prejudiced, I think that the completed quilt turned out really, really well. I hope you enjoy this sneak preview!