Trip Out West, California & Nevada

Every year about the time Winter tightens its icy grip on Minnesota, Roberta and I visit family living in warmer climes. This year, we boarded a jet plane with our Brompton bikes packed wrapped safely with Roberta's garment bags inside Brompton "B" bags. We prefer traveling by bus and train, but we didn't  have enough time to schedule a leisurely excursion on Amtrak's Southwest Chief as I did in 2014.

Our first stop was San Clemente where we did the following sketches on and around the San Clemente Pier. As always, click on the sketches to make them bigger:

Roberta's awesome sketch of the town around the station & pier.

Another sketch by Roberta of the view of the ocean from the station.

Sketches in my journal from the pier.

Awesome coffee and breakfast at La Gallette Creperie.

The iconic tower on the pier.

After a few days, we took the Metrolink Los Angeles. We took a bike trip to Venice via the Metro "Expo" line and the Ballona Creek Trail. I did this sketch on the train of another bicyclist sitting next to his bike:

We didn't have much time to sketch on the trail, so I took this photo:

Roberta and her Brompton on the trail.

We took a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Greyhound has excellent service between the two cities. The cafeteria in the Los Angeles Greyhound station had really tasty Mexican food.

Vegas isn't a great town to bike in, so our daughter chauffeured us around. Fremont is a good place to walk with lots of fun places to sketch outdoors, but the weather was cold and windy. We found a nice coffee shop, The Beat on Fremont with big windows where we did these sketches:

Roberta's sketch of the El Cortez across the street.

Denizens of The Beat.

Page from my journal.

The next day was warmer, so we drove to Red Rock Canyon a really great place to hike and sketch:

My sketch of people taking photos of each other.

Roberta's awesome sketch of Red Rock.

Our vacation came to an end and as we boarded our plane at the airport, we glimpsed (and sketched) an occurrence that reminded us of the saying "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas":

My sketch of the intestinal discomfort of one overindulgent visitor at the departure gate.