This is a picture-book post of our recent trip in the Southwest of the United States of America, partly to see the total eclipse (it was cloudy where we were, but we made the most of it). More text and descriptions are on my Instagram; both my husband (who is a great photographer) and I posted using the hashtag #SW_eclipsetrip
More quilty posts begin again next week (if you are new here, they are usually on a Sunday morning.)
Gallery 1 (click to advance): Salton Sea, Felicity The Center of the World, stitching on my quilt Twilight Garden (a constant throughout the trip), Gardens of the LDS Temple in Tucson Arizona, wildflowers, roadrunner at the Las Cruces rest stop.
Lunch in El Paso, tiles that intimated an eclipse.
Hotel El Capitan in Van Horn Texas, Love’s blue sky.
Gallery Two: Eclipse Quilt made for my son and family, still stitching, beginning of eclipse, Texas hill town wildflowers, the old courthouse in Brady–which calls itself the Heart of Texas, a quilt shop (it wasn’t open yet).
North Texas prairie, with the red soil of that land.
Roswell sign, White Sands National Park.
Trinity Site Marker: I can’t separate the events on Trinity from what followed about a month later.
Gallery Three: One of three big reasons why we wanted to take this trip (family and the eclipse, the other two): The Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). Here are three shots, culled from the many that I took of this place, but it is incredibly difficult to have photos give a sense of that New Mexico high desert, ringed by dark mountains, with these twenty-eight giant dish antennas spread out (sometimes as far as 13 miles), aimed high into the heavens. As I write this, I have on the soundtrack from the movie Contact, where the main character (played by Jodi Foster) uses the VLA to make a life-changing discovery. The three people standing next to the fence (to the right) of the dish help give you a sense of its size.
Mural in Magdalena, New Mexico (about 27 miles from the VLA)
San Miguel Mission in Socorro, New Mexico, founded in 1598.
Kingman Arizona train with four engines. Trains are everywhere along Highway 40.
My son-in-law built these quilt racks for my daughter’s collection of (my) quilts. Some were made by her children, though, with my help. Out of all my grandchildren, only these have come to see me and make quilts, so I’m happy this family loves them.
A very happy view this early morning, welcoming us back to our home state.
Statistics
Elevation range: from 1258 feet above sea level to 7200 feet (Ruidoso, New Mexico)
Overall Mileage: 3301.4
Days: 12 and a half
Gas Mileage: 27.3 mpg on average
Repairs: only an oil change in Albuquerque
Quirkiest: Roswell, New Mexico, with the giant pistachio near Alamogordo a close second
Weirdest: Felicity, The (self-declared) Center of the World, a little collection of buildings, and long granite slabs with engravings; near Yuma, Arizona
Prettiest Wildflowers: Sides of the Road in Hill County about an hour outside of Austin, with the fields in the Mojave a close second (with totally different terrains and flowers)
How Many Times a Day We Were Cranky: I’ll never tell.
Stories on Instagram with more on our trip
Happy Road Tripping to you–
In case the website link above fails, here is the info on the Roadrunner Sculpture (from Jennifer Bourn, from Inspired Imperfection):
The Roadrunner, designed by artists Olin Calk and Dan Smith, was created in 1993 as part of a recycling education program for the Las Cruces Foothills Landfill. The large-scale artwork was meant to draw attention to the landfill and the issues regarding consumption, the potential reuse of some materials, and the recycling of mass consumed packaging residuals.
The giant Roadrunner has become an icon of Las Cruces and in 2001, it was moved to the Scenic View Rest Area. Unfortunately, over the years the harsh desert climate negatively affected the materials of the sculpture, which were never designed to be permanent, and vandalism by visitors who wanted to put their own spin on the artwork took its toll.
In 2012, the Roadrunner Statue was dismantled and moved to Olin Calk’s farm so it could be refurbished. The renovations were completed in 2014 and the statue was returned to its place at the Interstate 10 Scenic View Rest Stop, this time placed atop a giant base designed to look like a big rock.
The current version of the Roadrunner Sculpture uses multimedia recycled elements like Volkswagen headlights, used sneakers, golf clubs, a trophy, old plastic toys, metal from the City of Las Cruces’ recycling center, and things gathered from local thrift stores.
Add in your bits and pieces, filling up the background in a random, organic way.
This is where I notice that the moon has two eyeballs staring right at me. And this is where I go get some more scraps, use a regular old-school glue stick and paste more fabric scraps over the eyeballs (you don’t see it in the first one, do you?). Quilt, again. And then I thought that the moon looked more like a black lump of coal than the moon (even though it does have a mountain-y horizon…it’s not THAT bumpy). More scraps glued on, more FMQ. I finished up by going in giant circle around the perimeter of the moon, to reinforce that Orb in the Sky thing.
Year 2: Urban Quarterly Challenges (from upper left): Maps, Structure, Landmarks, Contrast, Light (we seem to like this topic).
Year 3: Literature — We could choose what segment of literature to focus on. Some did a series of novels, Nancy did a series of children’s books’ titles, which she then donated to her local library, and I did a series of poems. I love the poems, pretty much hate these quilts, for a variety of reasons. 
Year 4: Color, and the challenges (again, from upper left): Microscopic, Music, Purple Passion, and I’ve Got the Blues.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 