Grandparents Day

Helping get rocks

Day 17 (9/13/2015)

I hate to use the word fall or autumn yet so let’s just say, “It was a beautiful late summer day”. I would call it a perfect day, seventy degrees with slightly clouded skies and a light breeze. Our son and daughter-in-law had texted about going out on the bike trail and we were ready. We had gone out for quick ride on Thursday night so we knew everything was down on this end of the trail. Once school starts it is hard to find the time to keep everything standing. I suspect there had been forces involved that weren’t just natural. When everything in a specific area is completely annihilated there is a pretty good chance that somebody just decided that they needed to be unbuilt. As soon as we got to the “sculpture garden” area we started building. As I have said before, if nothing else is standing I like to make sure that “Tripod” is. I started rebuilding it while our son Nate started building one of his own. Eileen and Wade and our daughter-in-law Rita started making chalk drawings and photographing the proceedings. At first we were having trouble getting things to stay standing and both Nate and my first attempts ended up back on the ground. Persistence paid off and eventually we had a couple up and finished. In all we set up four of the original six sculptures in the area. We didn’t have a lot of time though so we had to get back on the trail. We then rode to the Prairie area where, although in need of repair, the sculptures were still standing. When we got there however the railroad was cutting brush with a large shredder mounted on a crane that rode the tracks. Wade enjoyed watching it but we didn’t get a chance to do any more building and soon it was time for Wades nap so we headed back home.

Getting Started

Making Drawerings

Circles

Love this picture 

Royal Enfield

Now we are finished

Cutting Brush

Fischer Creek Stackers

Waves crashing over Cairns

Day 16 (8/30/2015)

Eileen was starting to run low on rocks to drill. It’s not that she doesn’t have rocks; it is just that she lacked the kind of rocks that have that special zing. We decided to set off for one of our favorite picking and stacking beaches, Fischer Creek. We had an “Art Closing” up in the area anyway so after enjoying the company of some artist friends for a couple of hours we headed for the beach. It was perfect day. There was a bit of fog hanging over the lake which only added to the ethereal quality. We worked our way down the beach picking and stacking as we went. We pretty much had the beach to ourselves. The parking lot was full so I am not sure where all the people were but they weren’t on our stretch of beach. At first we were trying to build to close to the water and as soon as we would get a nice one standing a wave would come along and knock it over. Eventually we were able to get the right combination of close to the water for good photographing and far enough from the waves for safe stacking. After a couple of hours we called it quits and headed for home excited about what the coming autumn beach combing would bring.

Path to the Beach

Stacken

A couple of Eileen's

Another Eileen

Even More Eileen

And Another

One of mine

Another one of mine

Looking up the beach

My last one

The fruits of our labor after Eileen is done