Flowers a black rabbit

And it's got to be fun!

My wife and I recently traveled to Hood River Oregon and to Troutdale Oregon. Travel photos and details on my blog but here are my sketchbook pages…

My wife

J. L. Sullens

took this photo of me sketching at the flower farm (for more details and flower photos click here)

Here are more sketchbook pages.

After an afternoon of sketching and photographing flowers we drove to the Edgefield McMenamins Black Rabbit Restaurant and Bar! Two dozen artists had been hired in the 1990’s to create artwork throughout the building; on plumbing pipes, on doors, on walls, on framed panels in various nooks and crannies everywhere you look! The artists were given two rules: refer to local history and “It's got to be fun". So the artists did what they called ‘historical surrealism’. Here are two of the paintings by Lyle Hehn that I particularly loved:

It's hard, using photos, to show the size of these artworks but they're quite large.

We had a delightful time looking at handpainted artwork, handcrafted stained glass light fixtures - handmade everything including our beers and dinner!! Some details and photos of this too are here on my blog.

The next day after we were home again I opened the jar of homemade dill pickles we had gotten (see the first drawing above). They were yummy along side adult grilled cheese sandwiches!

Here's the sandwich recipe from my kitchen sketchbook that our friend Beverly gave us some time ago! (If you're reading this “Hi, Beverly and thanks again for this absolute winner recipe for a sandwich! Love you!”)

There are more of our travel photos and details here and you can see more of the fun and funky artwork at McMenamins on this link here.

I hope your week contains some fun too … fair warning: I'm adopting the McMenamin creed “It's got to be fun”.