California, for now.

It's been 2 weeks since we got back to Santa Cruz and it feels like years since we have slept in the gypsy wagon! No worries, though, we are gearing up to be back in Salt Lake City real soon and will be heading north from there for more adventures of the wandering book artists!

Meanwhile, we have been making lots of new books to show you. Donna made a bunch of one of a kind books, some using the paintings she just did in the desert this spring. 

Peter printed a miniature book using some vintage photo-engravings that Karla gave us of cowboy scenes like sitting around an open campfire, wearing cowboy hats and boots and pictures of rearing horses. It is bound with wooden pine boards that our friend Jim milled from his land in Mariposa County, California. A saddle leather title panel on the front cover is stamped with a cowboy on his horse.

While here in California, Donna went to the Sierra Nevada to check in with the granite. She went on a short backpack trip near Hetch-Hetchy, in Yosemite, where John Muir had his last fight to save the wilderness. Soon after he died, the dam was built there to secure a  water supply for San Francisco. Late spring snows and a long winter made for lots of water in the waterfalls and rivers.

    

The bridges in front of Wapama Falls. 

   

Crossing a boggy meadow, so nice to be barefoot!

Painting near Illouiette Falls, Yosemite.

We also attended an opening ceremony for a newly named stretch of county road, "John Muir Highway" up in the foothills of the Sierra. Since Peter and I walked on that route back in 2006 when we walked from San Francisco to Yosemite, we got to say a few words to the gathered crowd and hold the ribbon!

We are headed for Salt Lake on June 21st, the start of summer! Let us know if you would like us to stop by and show you our books!