Kentucky Folk Arts Center

 Trish and I are in Morehead, Kentucky, for the Cave Run Storytelling Festival.  Yesterday and today we have school students on field trips to the Festival.

When our school day was finished yesterday, we went for a visit at the Kentucky Folk Arts Center, located here in Morehead.

Folk Arts include any form of self-taught artistic expression.  It may be quilting, painting, woodwork…there is no limit. Often Folk Artists are not recognized and often their work is left to decay and disappear.  The Kentucky Folk Arts Center recognizes Kentucky Folk Artists and preserves the best of their work in this tiny museum.

We loved this depiction called “Hurricane Hugo.”

Much of the work collected here is of  Biblically based content. From the Garden of Eden to The Last Supper we saw many serpents and many naked versions of Adam and Eve!

There was also a lovely gift shop.  Helpful for shoppers but also an opportunity for many artists to sell their creations.  We were very tempted by the fox with a chicken in his mouth.  This place is worth a stop.

A Quick Week!

 One week ago today we were finishing our work in Utah.  Looking toward home, Tropical Storm Ophelia looked to be heading toward our island.  So, Trish and I started home. From Torrey, Utah, our early morning route started through beautiful Capitol Reef National Park.

We got to Grand Junction, Colorado, by 10:30 am where we had a plan to get a new set of tires for the car.  At exactly 11:00, we were back on the road!  We got to Hays, Kansas, that night, to Mt. Vernon, Illinois, the next day, and back home on Thursday afternoon.  We beat the storm!

Though the ferries were closed and we had some rain and wind the next day, the biggest result we could see at home was shredding the leaves of one of our banana trees. (The trees do this naturally to protect them from losing leaves in a storm.)

By the next day, we were at work in the yard.  The storage addition to our garage that was just started when we left on this trip is now all finished and even painted.  It also includes an additional outdoor shower.  We had wood delivered before we got home for building additional flower beds, and, we got to work on that project.

By yesterday we had three new beds, one filled with irises and pansies, and one filled with ornamental grasses.  Whew!

This morning we are back in the car headed to the Cave Run (Kentucky) Festival and from there to Jonesborough for Teller in Residence and the National Festival.  It is all fun!

The Rest Of Thanksgiving Point

 Most of our time at Thanksgiving Point on this trip has been at the Ashton Gardens as the Gardens were the setting for both the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival and the Garden of Quilts Festival.  There is, however, much more here than the Gardens. 

Trish and I keep an annual membership so that we can enjoy all that is here whenever we are nearby.

There is the Butterfly Biosphere where hundreds of butterflies are hatched and released each day.  It is easy to have one make an up-close visit if you are patient.

There is the huge Museum of Ancient Life where you meet beautiful dioramas populated by more dinosaurs and other early life forms than you can imagine seeing in one place.

Then there is the Museum of Natural Curiosity, with a wing for each age group, as well as popular discovery encounters for all ages.  (While we were there there was a huge display of hands-on Rube Goldberg machines!)

The newest thing here is the brand-new and beautiful carousel which has marvelously artistic horses for everyone to choose from.  The carousel is enclosed in glass so that it can be ridden all seasons of the year.  Trish and I had to take this ride on two different days so we could try out different horses.

On this trip we did not even make it over to Farm Country where the multi-acre Cornbelly’s Corn Maze is just about to open along with other Halloween features. 

No matter what is happening here, Thanksgiving Point is a place to spend time whenever you are just south of Salt Lake City.  It is marvelous!

Garden of Quilts

 After our week at Zion Canyon, Trish and I headed back up to the Ashton Gardens (where the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival was held the week before) for the Garden of Quilts quilt festival.

All of the tents for srorytelling stayed up and were now filled with not just hundreds, but actually in the thousands of quilts!  In addition to the tented sites, there were quilts and quilts in rows and dozens all throughout the beautiful Ashton Gardens.  It was amazing to see.

We got to join Karen Ashton and the Thimblecreek Quilters for a lovely formal English tea at high noon on Friday. It was a civilized and lovely time!

But…the best thing of all about the Gardens of Quilts was that one of Trish’s quilts, a hexie she has worked on for five years, was selected to hang at the Festival.  It was like a lovely center piece in the tent where it was displayed!  We had a great time!

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

 On our way to Peek-a-boo Slot Canyon, we drove across the land belonging to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary owns 3,700 acres of land and leases an additional 33,000 acres from the Bureau of Land Management.  They are a no-kill animal shelter working to give animals that would otherwise be euthanized a place to peacefully live out their lives.

At any one time about sixteen-hundred animals live at the Sanctuary.  They live in communities with houses just like adoptive homes where they have their own little towns.  There is Bunny House, Dogtown, Cat World, Birdland, and others.

The Sanctuary has connections all over the United States and actively promotes spay-neuter programs as well as advocation for adoption rather than euthanasia.  Many animals are adopted from here, but, if not, they still live out their lives peacefully.  

There is a large area for houses, another large area for abandoned pet pigs, and a full veterinary clinic.

There is a very beautiful cemetery here for those animals who live out their lives at the Sanctuary.  If you adopt a pet from here, you may still return it for burial here when it dies.  People come back here again and again to visit the cemetery.  It is filled with hundreds of wind chimes to keep wild and unwanted animals away.

We loved visiting and learning about this place.

Peek-a-boo Slot Canyon

 On our last day at Zion, we drove over to Kanab, Utah, so we could visit Peek-a-boo Slot Canyon. There are many slot canyons in this area of sandstone that have been carved through the ages by water and wind.

When our guide, John, picked us up, he was very excited.  He had seen that he was to have Donald Davis on his tour and he and his wife are attendees at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival.  His first comment was, “It’s really you…now I get to tell you stories!”  He was excellent and we had to stop every little bit so he could take pictures to send to his wife!  It was sweet.

There was a big visible storm in the sky with rain in the distance. This was something to be on the lookout for. We did not want to be in this narrow canyon if rain fell…the canyon was where the water goes and can be very dangerous. Every year people die by not heeding the rain warnings.  We were fine, though, as the storm was downstream from where we were.  In the end we got only a dozen drops or so.

Finally we came to where we could go no farther. The only way left was up!  We each tried to see if we had the power to go up, but, this is as far as I got!

It was a day of beautiful color and rock formations to remember.

A Canyon Drive

 Yesterday we drove out of the Canyon so I could show Trish more of Zion.  We headed east and started the climb up toward the historic 1930 tunnel.

The amazing coloration of the rock was perfectly spotlighted by the morning sun.  We kept imagining what the first people thought of this place when they happened to come here.  From where did they come how did they live among this gigantic landscape?

How did early people make their way through this land, and, how did those who envisioned this becoming Parkland dream of making it accessible to travelers like us?  The rod re traveled wound back and forth multiple times gaining altitude before coming to the most remarkable project: the tunnel.

Built in 1930 by hand, the tunnel runs just inside the rock parallel to the outside edge and is 1.1 miles long.  There are numerous windows to the outside showing you that you are just inside the rock.  How was this conceived, mapped, engineered, and done in 1930?  Amazing!

We had a wonderful drive and would not have missed this day.