No New Art Yet, But Another Hike...

I don't have any new sketches or paintings to post this week, but we did go hiking this weekend, so I guess I'll post that. I really could just blog about hiking, given how much of it we've been doing these days. On Sunday, we drove over to Arroyo Sequit in Malibu. We took Westlake Blvd. for a good part of the drive which unbeknownst to us was a long series of hair-pin turns and certainly not for the weak of stomach.

Signs at the beginning of the trail warned of this being mountain lion country. We didn't see any mountain lions, but we did see a lot of speckled lizards and one horned toad. The trail itself was pretty short, about a mile and a half plus a brief detour.

It was so quiet there. You could hear the wind blowing through the pines - one of my favorite sounds, reminiscent of my childhood.

The trail afforded lots of great, sweeping views of the valley and mountains in the distant, as well as some huge satellite dishes. The detour close to the end of the trail led us to a paved which actually went right up to the dishes, which appeared to be the property of AT&T. It's always so strange to be surrounded by nature and then stumble across something very much man-made and very high-tech - seems so out of place.

Another odd aspect to hiking in LA is that we live in this incredibly dense, heavily paved urban jungle, but if we drive for twenty minutes or so, we're suddenly in the middle of nowhere. Driving through the mountains really feels like back-country where there might be a pocket of houses or a small town, but mostly wilderness. I can almost forget that I'm really right, smack in the middle of one of the country's largest cities. It really is quite strange when you think about it.

We were planning on doing a much longer hike at Chesebro Canyon on Monday, but we decided to get into a car accident instead. It really was unfortunate - we were barely two blocks from our home when we all stopped short just past an intersection and ended up in a three-car pile-up. We were the sandwich car and took the most damage. We'll probably have to replace 'Sophia.' My husband is sad - she's been a good car for a very long time. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. We were all walking around, talking coherently right afterward, although we were all badly shaken up. We both woke up feeling really sore today. Hopefully, we'll feel better soon and get the lack-of-car situation figured out this weekend. Dreading car-shopping...

I guess I should try to get some painting done today so I actually have some art to post next time!