art hike

Last November a couple of students asked about doing an art hike.  So Slagle and I planned a hike up Table Rock and no students showed up.  But I had a great hike in perfect weather with Jim, his wife, his sons and their friend.  This year a different student asked about planning another hike and several students seemed interested.  What the heck, right?  So Slagle and I planned another trip to Table Rock State Park.

 I arrived a few minutes early and started having a deja vu feeling.  That feeling grew stronger when Jim arrived next and the two of us stood alone in the parking lot again.

 But soon the carpool vehicles started arriving and we had a herd of hikers.  One car had to deal with a flat tire and ran late.  Cessquatch managed to somehow be driving around inside the park without finding us for 15 minutes.  Once she arrived and devoured the last doughnut, we set out to take a starting photo.  This was the only way I could get all of us in the photo.

 But since Jim and I look alike, it really didn't matter.  So from the left that's Elizabeth, Chelsea, Paige, Lindsay, Logan, Laura, Me or Jim, and Cessquatch.

 That's Jim doing a little free rock climbing on the way up.

 And those two tiny people way over there on that rock are Lindsay and Chelsea.

 Most of the large rocks on the way up needed to be climbed.  On this one they tried to spell out "LU ART" with their shadows.

On our way up the last carpool car arrived with Ashley (Whisk), Blake, Cam and Charlie the dog.  They caught up to us quickly and then passed us.  Ashley, Blake, Cam, Cessquatch and Charlie the dog were in pretty good shape.

 About 3/4 of the way up there's a lookout called Governor's Rock.  The students may not have been in as good of shape as their professors...so we took frequent breaks.  This was a good spot to rest and take photos.

 Those are the students resting.  

 While they rested and snacked I made some temporary tags.

 Then after a bit more uphill walking/climbing we reached the end of the trail.  

 The weather was perfect again and the view was spectacular.

 Here's the entire crew in a photo taken by some friendly hikers.  Lindsay and I are doing the "sorority pose".  

 Because we are art people and this is the digital age, we took a ton of photos and videos for various people at the top.  This is the first jumping photo.

 And this is the second one.  I think everyone is off the ground at some point in one of the two photos.  Except Charlie the dog.  He just seemed confused.

 It was beautiful at the top but also pretty cold.  

 The water draining off the rock face was frozen.

 The trip back down the trail is always faster but there were already some sore muscles and tired feet.

 Which gave me time to take photos and aggravate people.

 When we reached the bottom of the trail this bunch was beat.  

 I couldn't talk anyone into getting into the waterfall with me.  I walked down and dipped my hands in and was instantly glad no one agreed to get in. 

Jim, Lindsay and Chelsea on the waterfall.

I think this photo shows exactly why this sort of thing makes Lander awesome.  I haven't had Elizabeth, Chelsea or Lindsay in my class yet.  Still, we were able to get to know each other and apparently they felt comfortable enough to give me rabbit ears.  This opportunity to interact and get to know each other outside of the studio is one of the things that sets our department apart from all the others.  And our students...our students are wonderful people.  Not only do they want to do things like this on their own time but when they do they are well behaved, good citizens.  Well, except for Logan's potty mouth!  Right Logan?

Seriously, what a great day with great people.  This is why we get sad when our students graduate.  And perhaps why graduates like Whisk and Cessquatch come out of student retirement to go hiking with us.  I guess once you're a part of the art family you're always a part of the art family.  

 My day, however, was not done.  I pulled out of the parking lot and headed the opposite direction of everyone else.  I still had artwork to deliver to Walhalla some 50 minutes away.  After a really quick visit with Stan and Robin at End of the Road Studios, I turned the truck back toward home, picked up BBQ at Sticky Fingers and got home just before bed time.

  

fall

Cooler temperatures have arrived and the kids are changing their minds about what they're going to be for Halloween almost daily.  That means it's time to go to Stewart Farms and get pumpkins.  

  Blue makes his choice

 Violet carries the loot

 The kids have grown a bit since last year

 Our favorite animal this year was the cow.  We all got to pet him and Violet got several good licks to the face and arm.

 Violet and G took the wagon ride and Blue and I did the mini corn maze.  We took a wrong turn and ended up somewhere inside the big maze.

 And after our pumpkins were chosen and the photos were made, we said goodbye to the farm until strawberry season.

Monday was the first day of Fall Break and it was particularly exciting for me.  I loaded up all the new sculptures I created over the summer and delivered them to the powder coating place and picked out their colors.  I'm really looking forward to getting those back and sharing them with people.

Tuesday I put Zeke in the truck and drove up to Jones Gap State Park for a hike.  

 A coupe of years ago Blue and I tried out the Rainbow Falls trail on a whim.  The hike is about 2 1/2 miles and it ascends 1000 feet over that distance.  We climbed and climbed and the very young Blue complained and complained.  When he could go no more we turned around and started back.  He was young but he was too heavy to carry back down on my shoulders.  Last Tuesday I realized that where we turned around, we were about 10 mins from the end of the trail and this beautiful waterfall.

 Everything is so vertical here pictures just cant show it to you.  You have to be in the space and tilt your head all the way back and hear the rushing water and feel the mist on your skin.

 Zeke helped pull me up the entire trail and he would have tried to scale the sheer rock face if I had told him to.  

 We climbed up close to see how the water fell out from the rock face.

 We shared a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at the falls and he drank from the pools while I drank from the water bottle.

 And after a short rest, we started back down the hill.

 Everything was beautiful.

 Zeke did great though he did get off to a shaky start.  Like me, he's not the biggest fan of people.  There were a couple of groups of school kids taking in some nature walks.  As we approached the first loud and energetic group in order to pass them on the trail, Zeke freaked out and decided he'd rather go back to the truck.  He slipped his collar over his head and galloped back down the trail.  After a few yards he left the trail and found a nice bed of poison ivy to nestle down in.  We got hitched back up and then headed over to the river to rinse all the potential itchy stuff off our legs.  Then we headed back to the trail and successfully passed the noisy kids and continued on our great hike.

He did great the rest of the day and since I didn't get poison ivy, I decided to forgive him.

and the rest of the break

Between the day after Christmas and whenever I have to go back to school, there's this glorious time.  All the Christmas running around is finished and there are days of sleeping later and having very few plans.  Blue is usually home with me and he's excited about putting all those Christmas Legos together. 

This year it looked like G was going to have to work all week but as it happened, she ended up with most of the week off.  This meant lots of sleeping in and kids staying in pajamas all day.  The day she had to work I let the kids play for a while and then I moved them outside for a walk in the woods.

They love to walk around and explore.  It rained a good bit and the promise of getting to walk through creeks and jump in mud was good enough to get them in the fresh air for a long time.

 We do most of our woods walking after January 1.  This way we're much less likely to get mistaken for a deer.

We are not really a family of New Year's Eve revelers.  We've done a few of the Avett Brothers NYE shows but what we really seem to enjoy is not being around a lot of people.  Being in our underwear is always a nice plus as well.  Most public places frown on that sort of thing so we stick pretty close to the living room.  This year we had dinner plans with my baptist friend Ali and her fiance.  You may remember Ali from earlier photos and stories.  She's in grad school now and she up and met the man of her dreams and plans to get hitched in the spring.  This was our first time meeting him.  He's Chris, though my baptist friend seems to call him "Stigall" a good bit.  That's his last name.

Y'all may not know that Blue is madly in love with my baptist friend Ali.  At least, as in love as a 7 year old can be.  Luckily he approved of Chris and seemed to like him a lot.  So that went well.  We all liked Chris.  He seems to be a good guy.  After dinner we headed back to the plantation and decided to celebrate the end of the year our own way.  We loaded up some guns and made a little noise outside.  Theirs was a BB gun.  They only let me shoot mine once because they said it was too loud.

That week always has a bonus holiday for us...my birthday.  The early January birthday is great.  For the past couple of years I've declared it a family holiday and I've forced the family to go with me on some kind of hiking adventure.  This year it was frigid all day and after hearing the forecast, we decided to go for an easy hike at Pearson's Falls.  I thought the well below freezing temperatures would make for some cool photos.  After driving all the way up to the entrance, we found that they were closed for the entire month of January.  Great.  But Google quickly had us on the trail of Little Bradley Falls just up the road a bit.  

 We met a very kind stranger with a camera and tripod who gave us some tips to keep the kids safe.  This trail is not a state maintained trail so there are no signs and no forest rangers around.  The advice of a seasoned hiker is taken to heart.  We hiked about 3/4 of the way to the falls but we were thwarted in our attempt to cross the river at the second crossing.  There had been too much rain and the water was too high to cross without getting everyone's feet wet.  And wet feet when the temperature is well below freezing is not a good idea.  So we ate our lunch in a pretty spot and turned around.

 The shortened hike gave us time to drive into Saluda and get some great glass bottled drinks at the old mom and pop store.  

 That night G used my mom's famous big cookie recipe to make a big birthday cookie.  She even made the icing.  It was delicious.

 Then I washed the cookie down with a spectacular slice of mom's butternut cake.