Week 41: the one with all the storms!

Dispersed camping at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado

Hey, all! How was your week? We had a pretty uneventful one — except for all the wintery, windy storms.

We spent the week dispersed camping at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (CANM) near Cannonball Mesa. We found an amazing spot not too far in — just look at this view of Sleeping Ute Mountain right from camp:

Our camp spot surrounded by large boulders!

It never gets old coming back from a walk and seeing the van in camp! It always lifts my heart to see our tiny home on wheels:

It’s so quiet and peaceful here. We’ve had several flocks of mountain bluebirds fly through — one even perched on the side mirror but I didn’t get a photo of him, darn!

Wednesday we went for a walk down the road from camp and I could swear spring was on the way after we spotted some wildflowers — foreshadowing alert! — but turns out we were in for some more winter storms.

This yellow-eyed cryptantha is super cute and fuzzy:

And this double bladderpod is such a cheery yellow!

If you haven’t guessed, we love finding cool new-to-us plants.

Ranger Amala was on Sesame Street

Thursday we headed in to the CANM Visitor Center to drop off/pick up some packages and we met with Ranger Amala, my contact person for my artist residency.

We got to talking and she shared a video from when she was on Sesame Street back in her 20s when she was a ranger at the Grand Canyon! It was so cute I had to post it here:

We went into town to stock up on supplies, get gas, and dump and fill our tanks. (Heads up fellow travelers: Maverick gas stations sometimes have RV dump and fill stations, so you can take care of all of your liquids in one place.)

It got super windy and cold, so we didn’t want to try and find a new camp spot and just headed back to old faithful.

A Series of Storms

Friday we had a series of storms pass through the area — it was so neat for this weather nerd to watch the storms move across the landscape. Temperatures reached the 40s during the day so even though it snowed off and on we didn’t have any accumulation.

Here’s a photo out the van window so you can see what it was like, starting with our normal view:

And then here’s the same view with a storm passing through:

Sleeping Ute Mountain covered in clouds.

We stayed cozy in the van and I painted and cooked…

Soup and Salad

The cold, wintery weather made me crave soup — and salad! There’s just something so cozy about soup, amiright?

I made a big batch of lentil veggie soup:

Here’s the recipe if you’d like to try it — J suggested I share it, even though I don’t really follow a recipe - ha!

• 1 can unsalted diced tomatoes

• 1 can unsalted tomato sauce

• 2/3 cup uncooked green lentils

• 1/3 cup uncooked brown rice

• 1 yellow onion

• 4 stalks of celery

• 1 diced Russet potato or sweet potato

• 4 cups of frozen mixed veggies

• 2 bay leaves

• 3 tablespoons Italian seasoning

• 1 heaping teaspoon each of onion powder, garlic powder, and dried basil

• 2 veggie bouillon cubes

• salt and black pepper to taste

Dump everything in an Instant Pot, cover with water, and cook on the “soup” setting for 20 minutes. When the pressure has released throw in a few handfuls of chopped spinach.

We like to sprinkle Trader Joe’s 21 spice salute on top — so good!

And here’s my kale salad:

There’s not much of a recipe for this one — just a few tips:

• I like to “massage” the kale a little to make it easier to chew

• My new favorite salad topping is puffed quinoa (Amazon affiliate link) — I had some on a salad in Palm Springs and had to track it down. So good!

Snowy Saturday

We had more storms off and on Saturday. At one point I thought they’d passed, so I asked J if he wanted to go for a walk.

First we hiked up the hill to get a photo of Sleeping Ute Mountain, and then I got a shot of the van looking back the other way:

Of course, as soon as we set off down the road the wind kicked up and it started snowing again!

At one point the sun came out and there was a blizzard of fluffy flakes all at the same time.

This cool tunnel moved quickly overhead and we watched it head over Sleeping Ute. I grew up in Northeast Ohio but never saw anything like this before! I told J if I painted it nobody would ever believe this was real!

So unreal!

When we made it back to camp that crazy tunnel cloud was just passing over the mountain — so cool!

Later that day the storms had all passed and we were treated to an amazing sunset:

Wow. Just wow.

Sunday Sketch

Today I worked on more paintings to donate to CANM for my residency, including this one of a pottery shard we found at Lowry Pueblo. Note: this was painted from a reference photo — we left the shard where we found it.

What an amazing place to paint.

Here’s the reference photo of the pottery shard that I was painting.

I had several questions about my easel last week so I thought I’d post the details:

• My setup is from Cup Easel, and I have a tripod shelf, a tripod backboard, and the quarter sheet carrier that comes with 2 coroplast boards, plus a pivot shelf so I can hold an extra water cup for clean water.

• That’s a Manfrotto Traveler aluminum tripod — it packs down really small — so important when you live in a van! It has a hook in the middle so you can hang a backpack or other weight to help stabilize it in the wind. J initially got it to hold our Starlink Mini and for phone photography but I’ve sort of taken it over ;-D

• I also have this Leder Easel brush holder that’s pretty handy.

• I use my trusty Art Toolkit Folio and Pocket palettes, and they stick right to the magnets embedded on the shelf. (You can read more about my palette in this post on the Art Toolkit blog, and use code LISAFAN10 for 10% off.)

If I were to do it again I think I’d get two pivot shelves and not have a hole in the tripod shelf so that it would have more room.

I’m really loving this setup so far — can’t wait to see all the places I’ll paint.

That’s a Wrap

That’s it for this week!

We’re going to stay here in our beautiful camp spot so I can finish up the paintings I’m donating to CANM, and then we’re going to start heading towards Big Bend National Park. We’d love any recommendations y’all have for stops along the way.

See you next week! — Lisa, Jason, & Walter-the-Van