About 2 miles into the Emigrant Wilderness Area in California is a wonderful smaller lake that is back dropped with granite ridges that sit around the lake bowl. To access this lake, one mile is pretty easy and gradual and the other mile has a very steep rocky section before reaching the lake.

This is a view looking east with the granite mountains reflecting into the still lake. It is always clear but on the cool side for swimming. It is about 7500 feet elevation and can have snow in the area around well until into June.

I have hiked and camped to this lake many times with family and friends.

At the most far West and North corner of the USA is some small beaches and parks in these remote, wet and green corner of Washington State.

We had driven to this beach to view first hand the rock stacking on this tiny area of beach.

We were just blown away by the hundred of thousands of rock stacks that were located on every log and rock.

From slightly different angle, I grabbed the rugged shoreline and gray day in a painting.

On Hwy 108 /Sonora Pass at about 7,000 feet is a horse and trip staging area for the Emigrant Wilderness Area. Just a short 1/4 mile hike from the lodge, store and cabins is a wonderful large flat grassy meadows where the Middle Fork of the Stanislaus River wanders past.

The colors vary from the bright green grasses of the spring snow melt, and the yellow fall colors of the trees and shrubs. The gray of the steep granite mountains behind the backdrop.

Just a short 2-3 mile hike from the Leavitt Meadows campground is this hidden gem of a lake that has a silver mountain backdrop. This lake on the Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Range offers warmer swimming in the summer.

For 2 summers, we visited the Gulf Islands in BC Canada on various trips. There are just numerous little islands that are served by 1-2 daily Ferry’s off of the larger Vancouver Island. This island is a few hours North of Victoria and has an old light house on it. The sun was setting late, maybe 10 PM in the summer at this far north location.

A few summers back I visited Mono Lake, off of Hwy 395 on the Eastern side of the Sierras. I went swimming in the very salty water and came prepared to partially rinse ourselves of the excessive salt once we got back to the cars.

Mono lake is a very salt concentrated lake since there is no out flow for this lake and over years the salt never gets washed out and builds up. It is much more salty than the ocean.

The lake level has been dropping due to water being taken from sources that naturally feed it exposing these tufa structures coming out of the sinking water levels.

Marmot Lake is a un-named lake on US topo maps at 8,263 feet just south of Gianelli Cabin Trail Head. One year while hiking above this point at Burst Rock, I looked down and saw this wonderful lake from a distance that was not really mentioned or labeled on the US topo maps. I went to explore and found this reasonably sized un-named lake that we now call Marmot lake for the many marmots that live in this area.

The lake is now very shallow and silted up and only about 4-5 feet deep in the deepest part but sort of swimable.

Blue lake is over 10,000 feet on a un-marked trail off of Highway 108 or Sonora Pass. The lake often has a snow glacier running into one corner of the lake and it has this blue and green look to this lake that gets fairly deep in one section. It is above well above tree line at 9,000 so only a few short plants exists in the mostly volcanic rock and scree.

The northerly most city of the 5 (cinque) terra cities is Monterosso. We stay in this city for about 4 days while we visited and hikes the trails to reach the other cities. We were there in September when the weather was still warm and the beaches were busy but not overly crowed.

A few years back I was visiting Provence France in mid to late June. The lavender fields were not quite in their peak yet but enough to see and smell the large lavender fields of the region.

As I was creating this painting, I just couldn’t create the lavender color I wanted to express. I had some red (Alizarin Crimson) that I mixed with phalo blue to get a purple shade. Then I tried adding bits of yellow, and white to get the colors I wanted but it still didn’t have that lighter, pink and blue tint I wanted. From some color theory research, that red may never work to get that purple and lavender color that I wanted and I need to start with more magenta. I’ll do another version of this scene once I figure out the right color mixing!