Hello-

I am home from a wonderful and stimulating trip from Spokane Washington to Lincoln Nebraska.     We loaded a black rented jeep with 20 boxes of Marty’s books and our suit cases and we were off.  First we went south along the   mountains  between Idaho and Montanta and enjoyed the landscape.  Our fist goal was to see a falt in southern Idaho

where the land shifted fifteen feet in the 70s.  The exposed slip is the white area in this photo.    The drive to this location resulted in a flat tire.   Thank goodness for  the help of a Fireman from Texas who helped us put on the spare.  But that meant taking the boxes of books out of the car so we could get to the spare and reloading them afterward.   We drove  to the next town and although it was Labor Day week end we found a tire dealership that was open.  They agreed to patch the tire.  So I unloaded the boxes again to get to the tire.  After he patched it the tire bulged so we did not put it on the car.  Loaded the books yet again and drove to Idaho Falls airport  where the car rental company traded our Jeep for a bigger car.  This picture is of Marty waiting outside the airport.       The new one was white and had so much fancy stuff on it that we never  figure them all out.  There was so much space in  this one that we did not even need to stack the boxes on top of one another.  We could have slept flat on top of them if we had to- but that did not happen.  Then on to Yellowstone.   Lots of stops there with  geysers and  hot springs,museums and animals.   We checked put the petrified tree  and  enjoyed the day until  about two in the afternoon when it started to hail on us.  We pulled off and waited for it to stop as the hail balls were the size of marbles.  The storm lasted about half and hour and left the road covered with hail that made for slow slick driving.   This picture

is a  view out the windshield early on in the storm.     We left the park and were told that the road we needed to use to get to our lodging was closed due to snow.   So we stop and found another cabin to stay in.   It stormed during  the night but we got up to sunny skies and snow covered canyon walls on both sides of our resting place. We altered our plans   again and opted to drive  south and cross the Continental   Divide at Dead Indian Pass  as it was lower and less likely to be closed.    It was  a beautiful drive and we made lots of stops for pictures.    We continued south in Wyoming .

       Ate lunch along the Wind River  and continued to enjoy  the landscapes.

  We went to Fossil Butte  National Monument and enjoyed the wonderful museum there.  Life sized  alligator and  turtles with the four foot shells were among the fossils as well as lots of leaves and ferns.    We  had crossed the Continental Divide seven times before we left the mountains. We drove across the southern portion of Wyoming  and  into  Scott’s Bluff  just at sun set.  It is a good thing we got to  see it that evening because when we got up in the morning there was so much  fog one could hardly see across the four lane highway.    It took the better part of two days to cross the Nebraska sand hills.  We saw lots of wind mills, cattle and train cars loaded with coal.

 We visited the Ashfall  Fossil Beds.  They were a wonder, with  the remains of over one  50 rhinos, turtles, tortoises ,and Sand Hill Cranes.  There were the skeletons of  three types of houses- three toed and single hoofed ones.   And  species of saber toothed rabbit- something I had never heard of before.    We left the fossils for Lincoln  where we meant Rosalie.Friday was the last unloading of the boxes at the International  Quilt  Study Museum.  A man came  with a cart and did the job that time.

  We enjoyed the museum. There was a great display of quilts from southern China.   The silk made them very beautiful when they were mixed with gold  couched embroidery thread.     We took the tour of the Mountain  Mist Collection too.     We explored Lincoln on the week end and enjoyed the public art that is so much a part of the city.   There are lots of beautiful brick houses too.  We also went to the German Russian Immigrant museum on Sunday.   It was great too.

  On Monday we had a meeting with the director were she took Marty’s QBL quilt and showed us the storage and preservation  parts of the museum.  She spent a couple of hours talking with us and it was g good visit.  We enjoyed out stay at the Rogers House Bed and Breakfast but we were all glad to be on our way home on Tues.  morning.

Progress  Report:  Ethel’s Nine Patch   I did do a bit of work before I left on Tues for the start of this trip.  I had the strips put together from our weekend at Judy’s camp and I started cutting them into 5” squares and matching them with solids from my Ethel stash.    The blocks are a nine patch and I may add sashing.   That remains to be seen

Along the Shore  I am doing the machine quilting on this one now.

Machine Painting   I started working on the machine drawing on this butterfly yesterday.   The printed butterfly is fused to organza  with a paper backed fishable.  Then it is hooped before I began the machine work.   I would not trim the butterfly before I did the machine work next time.  Even though it is fussed it is still fraying.

Label Blocks # 76,#77, #78, #79, #80 I took this project with me on the trip and found lots of little snippets of time to do hand work so I got five blocks done in two weeks.

Keep Creating

Carol