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.

Sketching and Bicycling in Los Angeles

In the previous post, we visited family in San Clemente. We biked down to the Metrolink station and caught a train up to Union Station in Los Angeles. We got on the Purple Line all the way as far as it goes to Wilshire and Western. We got on our Bromptons and peddled down 4th Street to our motel. Los Angeles is a great place to ride a bike as long as you stay off the busy streets.

We were only a short bike ride from my Mom's apartment, the Los Angeles County Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits. I did a sketch of a bubbling, oozing pit with pen and colored pencils in my small, Strathmore toned paper journal:

My sketch of the La Brea Tar Pits.

 Another fun place to sketch in Los Angeles is the Farmers Market. Roberta did a fun sketch i watercolor in her Strathmore Hardbound 500 Series Mixed Media Art Journal:

Roberta's sketch in the Farmers Market.

Another Farmer's Market sketch in my small journal.

Another fun place to sketch is in front of Trader Joe's.

We wished we could spend more time in Los Angeles sketching and biking, but we had to leave. Here is a sketch I did of the beautiful palm trees in the Park La Brea community in my big journal:

The Palm Trees of Park La Brea.