Pit Stop

Home again after a wonderful visit at Mom's - my best vacation EVER! Three things came together to make it an incredible time - I'm recovering nicely from the former job; I was travelling alone so no one to keep me occupied, and the longest stretch Mom and I have had together alone (mostly) since my brother was born in 1956! I really felt like a candle in the sun - the stress melted away. Ahhhh -- reborn! Even a last minute glitch didn't wind me up - I had it so firmly fixed in my head that the return was on Tuesday that I never rechecked the ticket till Tuesday morning, only to find that my itinerary had been cancelled. HUH??? WTH???? After a few phone calls and careful re-reading turns out my flight was MONDAY night, not Tuesday. Oops. Oh bother. The airline put me on the Tuesday night flight no problem and I'll chock another one up to senility. The drive from Nowhere, Utah to Las Vegas takes around 4 hours give or take depending on how many stops. And it's 4 hours of NOTHING; miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. There's some spectacular scenery along the way in places - the Virgin River Gorge is utterly fantastic, like driving down into a mini version of the Grand Canyon. DAMN hard to keep eyes on the winding road tho!!! I was worried about driving into downtown Las Vegas during rush hour and finding the car rental return place but it was easy-peasy, the place has it's own freeway signs and really good signage to direct you. So now, all relaxed and with feet up, I'll show you a few more highlights. On one of our wanderings, Mom and I stopped by this wagon on the side of the road and bought fresh homemade bread from two young girls, situated just north of Bryce Canyon:

They live quite a long ways away through the desert and back into a "lost" canyon, and as I figured it they must leave home about 4 am to get to their trailer (behind the wagon) to make their bread in time to open for business at 10 am. Whew - I really wanted to support that, what a way to earn your keep.
There's deserted log cabins everywhere you look in south central Utah and they're one of my favorite things - I have LOTS of pictures of empty decaying pioneer cabins. I love to imagine the families that lived there and I do a mental recreation of what the cabin looked like when it was a home. Every old homestead is surrounded by cottonwood trees planted by the original owners - it's the first thing they did. Here's a typical abandoned cabin; think you can envision the family that lived there? Papa in the fields, Mama hanging laundry and Sonny-boy out, ummm........... robbing trains?

LOL - yes, that's the true story of this cabin. This is the boyhood home of none other than Butch Cassidy!
The hundreds of miles surrounding this area was all old Butchs' playground and very easy to see how he could disappear into the wild and escape capture. Terrific stuff!
OK, I have quilty stuff too, never fear. One of the vendors at the Quilt Walk was selling these great seam rippers that he makes himself:

They were so beautiful, and feel SO good in the hand! He uses all sorts of woods in any finish you can think of, and has dozens of designs for the handles. I'm so sorry I'm such a loser I didn't take a picture of his display - it was awesome. He also has stilettos and pens and such - fantastic. His card says "Woodworking inspired by Quilters" Great stuff! Oh yea - those beautiful carved handles have a small flattened area on one side so they won't roll away. That must be the part inspired by a quilter!
While I was gone my daughter suffered her first big heartbreak - she's one to always have her guard up and not put her heart out there for fear of getting stomped on. Well, she was seeing a fella last year that she thought was moving too fast and she broke it of - breaking his heart and putting him into a tailspin. He quit his job here and moved back down to the southern part of the state to recover. So he's been visiting friends here again and she and he met up again and had a few dates and she realized that he really is what she wants and she had been acting like a stupid kid so she told him. And he said forget it. Not that you can blame the guy but still - MY baby is unhappy and what do ya do with an unhappy kid? You make her a quilt! She pulled this pile of fabrics from my closet many months ago -

Funny really because I bought that petroglyph fabric about 5 years ago with her in mind! I'm not sure about that lime green - that might need some fiddling - but I need to get busy and come up with a design. First however, I have this little matter of doing the laundry and re-packing. Hunny and I are leaving tomorrow to drive up the coast of Oregon to deliver a slot machine. Our favorite mini-vacation, with a "few" quilt shops to visit along the way, LOL! Then I get a week more to lay around then it's BACK TO WORK!