Rose Canyon Road Trip!
—and More of My Panel Art
I had so much fun taking you on a virtual road trip to Sequoia National Park recently that I decided to take you on another virtual road trip—this time to Rose Canyon in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson.
Since Rose Canyon is situated at 7000’ elevation, it’s usually about 20° F. cooler than Tucson, making it an ideal destination for a day trip to escape the heat in Tucson!
Rose Canyon offers picnicking, camping, hiking, birding, wildlife viewing and fishing—but what I enjoy most is the piney smell! For me, that smell brings back happy memories of going on family road trips when I was a kid, visiting many of the national parks in the Western U.S.
While hiking around Rose Canyon in late Summer 2024, Hubby & saw 23 species of wildflowers, and we (meaning: Birder Hubby) also identified 26 species of birds. The most exciting discovery, though, was some large (>3” diameter) mushrooms!
I was delighted to see these mushrooms because we rarely if ever see mushrooms in our yard here in Tucson and when we do, they're small, brown and nothing charismatic 😉 like these two ‘shrooms!
I haven’t identified the tan mushroom, but a friend of mine has a friend who’s foraged for mushrooms for decades, and he identified the red mushroom as a “good edible bolete”.
A previous road trip to Rose Canyon in 2022 inspired me to create this piece of panel art (panels are single subjects or scenes with frames—often black borders—like you see in comics).
I enjoy creating panel art (like the above example and my Tucson Yard Journal series) in which I combine various aspects of a specific time and place into one piece of art. That said, each piece of panel art takes me quite a while from start-to-finish, from planning the overall composition & the composition of each panel, to deciding on the text & placement of text, to drawing & painting each panel. As time-consuming as these are, I love the end result, as I’ve always loved comics, and my panel art is definitely a nod to that art form!
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Always inspiring!
Thank you! 😀