Sunday Excursion

 On Sunday, we were up at 4:30 to begin a day of exploration in the Can-Am. We've been wanting to take a route across the mountains that takes us through what is known as The Gap and up to Summit Peak. We loaded up the buggy and hauled 7 miles down the road to our starting point, beginning at 6.

The road is mountainous and rocky 

But gosh we saw some pretty spots                                     

and it took us from 5,500' to 10,080'.  We could see our property from the top...about 8 miles as the crow flies, but 30 miles by road, averaging about 6 mph. LOL.              

This was my view much of the way. LOL

We saw a nice Elk

A young deer

And I was excited to see my first wild bear. Not a great picture, but I just had my phone camera...they were probably about 300 yds away so it's blurry, but we saw a sow with 3 cubs traveling through the trees and spent some time watching them

We discovered mountain springs...it's always important to know where your nearest water supply is

It's been a good year here and the springs were running

I do wish I had grabbed my camera, but I was mostly scanning the mountains with binoculars and I'm glad I was able to capture a bit of the day with my camera phone. The light was so good up the 7 Cabins road where there are no cabins. Grin.

We found scrumptious wild raspberries

And picked some to snack on

I pinch myself every single day and thank God for placing us back in the mountains

55 miles and 10 1/2 hours later we made it back to the truck. We spent about an hour glassing for game and looking at springs, but the rest of the time we were bouncing up and down the mountain. 

We were worn out by the time we got back home and I was impatiently waiting for the chickens to get their feathered behinds into the coop at 7:30 so that I could go to bed, but it was a really incredible day!

Bundle Up

Yesterday I hauled the boys to the east side of the ranch:

  Gosh, I hated to watch them trot off

It was just a tad chilly:

This was our first hard frost:

Ready or not:

                            

Road Trip Pit Stops

I never take the highway when I travel. I'm a back roads kind of girl and I'm always up for a good pit stop. When the kids were young, used bookstores were always sought out. Endless adventure lurked on every shelf.

(Copyright: Angela Waye: Shutterstock)

Our girl just texted me about one that she stumbled upon the other day and she urged me to drive down to see her and spend the day perusing the shelves together. That's an offer I can't refuse. Spending time with our adult children is always at the top of our list.

 Antique and/or junk shops also enticed us:

I found this photo on google images, but this is one of the shops I pop into when I find myself in Mason, Texas. And surprisingly enough, I was the one that always had to pull the kids out to get back on the road. They could get lost in the untold stories collected here. Stories of a simpler time. Stories steeped in history. I love that they have an appreciation for that.

I still find myself drawn to used bookstores and antique shops, but now that the kids are grown, I've added quilt shops to my pit stop list. I wasn't a quilter until they left home. I can't resist the temptation of a small town quilt shop. Last time I drove down to visit my mom, I stopped in Lamesa, a small town along the way, and discovered a little quilt shop on the square, called Sew Jo's. Looked like a good place to stop and stretch my legs. This sign greeted me:

How fun is that? I can see how it would be frustrating for people traveling from out of town and finding the shop closed, but I like the small town mindset. The owner gave me her card and said all I ever needed to do was call and she'd pop over to open the shop if she wasn't there.

It's a small shop, but I liked her selection. There were no books or notions, just fabric and I didn't walk away empty handed:

$3.00/yd? Yes please! I thought this would be a really cute backing for a little boy quilt as well as a pillowcase. They had 5 yards and I took it all.

When we were at the quilt shop last week, almost everything was $12.00 a yard. I try to support the little brick and mortar quilt shops, but at $12.00, I'm not able to buy much. I was going to get a yard of this, but at $2.00/yd, I had to get the whole bolt.

14 yards will be enough for more than 1 quilt backing. There was a quilt/yarn/wool shop in another little town, but it has closed. For years I would stop in there and come out with armloads of yardage that was priced between $3-6. I think those little shops are becoming a thing of the past and that saddens me. I love a good bargain, but I also understand that a business needs to be able to operate above the profit line.

And my mom is always stumped as to why it takes me so long to get there. It's a 9-hour trip without the detours, but for this self-proclaimed hermit, I enjoy the little pit stops along my road trip routes that interject a few surprises along the way.

Back Roads Finished!

Sewing has not been happening around here lately, but that's not a complaint. Between company and our fall cow works, and our boy being home, 3 trips to Texas, and a trip to look at bulls, another to pick them up, and putting up apples and mountains of green tomatoes, it just hasn't been a priority. Good thing too because there hasn't been an extra moment to sew...or blog. -insert sheepish grin-

However, a few months ago I picked up a few quilts from Jackie and I have found a bit of time to stitch on this binding although this one took me almost an entire month to bind.

It's a great cuddle size at 70" x 84".

 We had so much fun in Amarillo when we went for the WRCA Ranch Rodeo Championships a few weeks ago, but when I had had my fill of socializing, I just wanted to crawl in the back of this wagon with my quilt:

Jackie quilted this fun barbed wire meander across it that has little stars running across the wire:

This quilt came to be as the result of extra blocks I made for my Western Many Trips quilt...the Wagon Quilt. :) I used Bonnie Hunter's wildly popular tutorial from HERE .

I just set them together with a sashing and liked the end result. I didn't want these extra blocks to become orphan blocks and end up forgotten in a dusty project box and now I get to cross off another quilt from my UFO list!

I'm horrible about labeling my quilts, but I'm trying to be better about it. After all, I do have a machine that does most of the work for me. So I stitched this label I made a while back to the back of this quilt:

And by the way, this backing may be my most favorite ever:

I found it last winter in an Amarillo Quilt shop. Another finished quilt that will often be called into action during the cold months of winter:

Back Roads Detour

Back in August I posted my Western Many Trips Wagon Quilt here. Well when I started making these blocks, it didn't occur to me to run the black print through the middle, but I really liked the way it looked, thus, in the end, I ended up with 30 random blocks, and the other 100 went into my wagon quilt.

I thought of those blocks as a UFO..or my new favorite phrase PHD.  Barb over at Just Sayin Sew calls them that. PHD stands for 'projects half done'. I love that! Just tell people you've been working on multiple PHDs. I hadn't heard that before, but then again I do live under this rock.

And with my rock solid determination to really get some of those projects off of that list this year, I pieced these together, adding sashing because I didn't think it would be big enough without it. It ended up being 70x84 which, around here, is a good snuggle size. Piecing this was on my list of January Gettin' It Done projects, but I hadn't taken a picture to share.

You still don't get a great picture though, and please excuse the boxes of ammo holding it down. It was the first thing that came to mind when I needed something compact and heavy at my fingertips. :)

So, this one will be called Back Roads since I kind of took a detour in making it. I always have been  a back roads kind of gal anyway.