Pacific Road Trip

A California road trip can be one of the nicest drives in the world. Good scenery, good food, good wine.
Here are a few photos from our recent road trip from Scottsdale, Arizona through California and the Oregon coast, ending in Portland, Oregon.  If you haven't taken a road trip through California yet, you have a treat in store.  We have done it numerous times so ask us if you want more details.

Spring in Scottsdale, Arizona.Yes, Arizona is a desert, but is a very lush desert. The Sonoran desert has more plant species than any other desert in the world. It is also the only place in the world where saguaro cactus grow. Those are the tall ones in the photo. 

My local mountains, the McDowells on a rare cloudy day.

Western Arizona and Eastern California. A whole lotta nothin'.

But further west it gets a whole lot better. 

Calistoga, California in the Napa Valley. A charming town in the Napa Valley. Known for hot mineral springs.  

We got an early start leaving Calistoga. It was beautiful and misty. 

Despite passing numerous vineyards, we didn't stop at any wineries here or in any of the other wine growing regions we visited this past year, including Mendoza, Argentina, Tuscany, Italy, and the Napa Valley. I have almost never visited a winery. I think I toured one, about a decade ago.

Either they just happen to grow grapes in attractive places that I like to visit or these places are attractive because they grow grapes there.

 

The California redwoods were the highlight of our road trip. Although we have spent our years together living on islands or in the desert, we both really love trees.

Then we headed to the ocean.

Eureka California has a some wonderful Victorian architecture.

In very northern California there is a very cute free museum right on the highway with terrific exhibits about Native Americans throughout North America. Here are just one or two photos from their exhibits.

Along with big trees, and ocean views, Northern California has herds of wild Roosevelt elk. In some places you can get all three at the same time.

Bye Bye big trees, hello, Oregon coast. We spent four summers on the Oregon coast and it was nice to go back. 

We discovered a small park with cobra lilies, a carnivorous plant, local to Northern California and Oregon. 

Last stop: Newport, where we summered for two years. Newport has a charming river waterfront with some docks that often are covered with sea lions sunning themselves and taking a nap.

Finally, we headed east to Portland. We are once again staying on a large houseboat on the Willamette River. I'll show you some photos from there soon.

The big excitement so far is a Canadian goose nesting a few feet from our door. It looks like she has three or four eggs. I hope they hatch soon so I can watch them grow up.
Update a day later: 4 eggs yesterday, 6 today. It takes about a month for them to hatch. I don't remember geese from other years. What are they even doing here? This isn't Canada. Don't they have a GPS?

Art of Buenos Aires

Art and architecture are my special interests,  so I tend to post a lot of those pictures here and on Facebook. A few months ago I posted a blog on the art of Argentina including a lot of interesting museum pieces. If you missed that one you might like to scroll back to February and take a look.

This post has a different focus. These are not necessarily my favorite pieces or even great art, but rather images I found unique, entertaining, innovative, provocative, and/or thought-provoking. To me these represent the art of Buenos Aires as well as those nice Latin American paintings from museums that I posted earlier. None of these are regular old paintings and none come from museums.

First are four different artist's interpretation of Eva Peron, the former First Lady of Argentina and a huge cultural icon. So I'm starting with the one that is literally huge. It's 10 stories high.

This enormous wrought iron sculpture covers ten stories on the side of a tall building in a very prominent part of the city on the widest street in the world, 9 de Julio. 

A large stained glass image of Evita in a window

This portrait is made out of bread.  Possibly the message is Evita tried to uplift the masses and give them more bread.  

A detail of the bread portrait

An image of what Evita might have looked like today as a modern tattooed, feminist. 

Here are some  other pieces that caught my eye

These horses are made from pieces of wood, possibly driftwood. and stand in a large hotel lobby. But wait- are these two horses or one horse and a unicorn?

These next three paintings of tango dancers come from the walls of a well-known milonga (tango dance hall).  I think they really capture the mood of the dance. 

This large mural is found on the wall of Gallerie Pacifica, an elegant Beaux Arts style shopping center with murals on the walls and ceilings by well known Argentine artists.

In my opinion signs like these are the iconic art of Buenos Aires. This typeface, the bright colors, they say Buenos Aires and are found no where else.

Andy Warhol. This picture was in that same hotel lobby with all the Evita portrait made from bread, Sorry about the lighting. It isn't a great likeness so I didn't plan to share it and didn't take a lot of trouble taking the photo.
 I bet you can't guess what this made from. You'll never guess. Detail below.

This portrait was made out of condoms. I am not certain if there is any symbolism there. As far as I know, Andy Warhol was asexual. 

Wedding shoes. I'd rather look at them than wear them. 

This fellow is a comedian and presumably chose his outfit for this billboard. I assume the theme is What I Look Like After A Wild Night.... in my Fantasies. I included it here because it is very creative of him, even if he looks ridiculous.

My favorite art is street art, It is Art for the people. In cities with a lot of graffiti there is a fashion to paint the security doors they put over stores at night. Because if you don't paint them then people just scribble graffiti all over it anyway. So there are many, many of these painted doors. Here are a few.

Medusa in a hoodie

Along with painted doors, some parts of town, like trendy Palermo, have painted buildings.