Tucson Sketching Trip

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

Some people like their Christmas to be decorated with snowmen and conifer boughs weighed down with snow. I prefer to see lots of green, preferably steamy palms and junglish things.   

Christmas Cholla

This year I compromised and opted for a sketching trip with saguaro cactus and Christmas cholla. Contrary to my high hopes, I didn't escape the cold much, it being 25° several nights as I camped out in my rental Jeep SUV in the desert.

Saguaros in the Catalina Mts.

Actually, I had a lovely time during the days, when the temperatures ranged between 50° and 70,° but suffice it to say that spending from 5:30pm (when the sun goes down) till 9am the next morning (when it has finally gotten warm enough to bear getting up) inside an SUV is not ideal.

My "camper"

I had come prepared to camp out, with a little cat food can camp stove which I had made myself from an aluminum cat food can and a paper punch after finding instructions on YouTube given by this tattooed dude. 

The stove is sitting  in the skillet

BTW, you only need about half as many holes as he suggests. I also figured out that if you put the stove in a skillet and shape aluminum foil around it as I show in my photo, it makes a fine windbreak and confines the heat to where you want it. In the skillet, the flame is protected and the skillet and foil also protect your surroundings from wayward heat.

The stove here is out of sight UNDER the flattish pan, which is half full of my coffee water heating up, and the uppermost can is full of ravioli which I was warming up in the hot water.  It's a super stove in terms of being lightweight and taking up NO space, but you should experiment with it before you go camping to figure out how much fuel you'll need.  If you can't find Heet, denatured alcohol will work, but it's much more expensive. 

Ready to sketch

I sketched and journaled every day. While most of the time, I simply sat to sketch in the sand or perched on a rock, there were times when fallen cactus spines made this unwise. If my canvas chair was handy (I bought it on arrival for $6.95 at a sporting goods store) I'd set it up and draw in comfort. I sat in front of this cactus for a long time, sketching its demise, an astonishing sight.

Dead saguaro

For the first week, I stayed in Gilbert Ray County Park, a marvelous little campground west of Tucson in Tucson Mountain Park. I could step off my campsite into seemingly untouched saguaro/cholla/mesquite desert, and sketch to my heart's content.  

The people there were super nice ~ both the people who looked after it and the people in RVs and campers whom I met there: Jim, who offered me a heater to use during the cold nights, and made coffee for me in the chilly mornings; the folks who needed an aspirin for a hangover, then invited me for breakfast and admired my sketches...I met a lot of nice people on this trip.

Just across the road from the campground was a series of nature trails with lots more sketching opportunities.

Don't swing your arms whenwalking oast chollas!

This Barrel Cactus was one of many along the trail.  And walking along a trail through the Cholla was an other-worldly experience!

Daniel had lent me a cellphone for this trip, which meant that I could access my email and explain to people trying to order books that I would take care of it after my return in January..


Since I was spending as many as 14-15 hours in the "camper," I had brought along a tablet upon which I could read ebooks. That proved to be a real sanity saver as I could wrap up in my sleeping bag and fleece blankets to keep warm and read through the many long hours of darkness ~ after I finished sketching, of course.   

In the future, I'm determined to choose winter destinations SOUTH of the equator,  where it will be summer and there are more daylight hours than dark hours. Fifteen hours is WAY too long to spend cramped up in a car, and at 25°. there aren't a lot of other options when you're 20 miles from town.  Like I said, the days were lots better than the nights. Ah but the days!!!!

 

Great Horned Owl

Harris's Hawk

Gilbert Ray campground is fewer than ten miles from the famous Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. If you ever get a chance to go there, don't miss it.  One of their features is the raptor free-flight performances at 10 and 2 every day.  

I was able to photograph owls and hawks that you normally would spend months or years (or never) getting this close to.  

 These photos were taken during the birds' performance. They were all flying free in the desert, under no restraints. But if you'll notice, the Great Horned Owl and the Redtail perched on the same branch.

Barn Owl

Red-tailed Hawk

Great Horned Owl

     









There were other marvels at the Museum, as well.  I had a great time sketching the Desert Bighorn Sheep.  I suppose I MIGHT have seen Bighorns if I'd hiked to the top  of the mountains east of Tucson. But not likely.  

Their enclosure is about as real-looking as you're likely to find, and they're apparently contented, the ewe having produced offspring more than once while living there. She's the one with the smaller horns.   
There is other wildlife that chooses to live in the museum, as well, it being such a nice place.  This lovely cardinal apparently lives on the grounds.  
 
Unfortunately, campers are only allowed to stay at Gilbert Ray for seven days, then they shoo you out to make your way in the world.  There are more campgrounds east of Tucson, but before I went I visited Saguaro National Park (West) to see the famous Hohokam Petroglyphs, which perch on a nearby hilltop.

Hohokam petroglyphs

Here are the sketches I managed, peering around others as they came to respectfully examine them. 

I wonder what these petroglyphs were meant to convey.......... 

I ended up with twenty five pages of sketches ~ not bad for about twelve actual sketching days (that doesn't count flying-to-and-fro time or provisioning days spent at the grocery and sporting goods stores). 

In order to do as much sketching as possible, I didn't take the time to color ANY of the sketches. Evenings in the cold car didn't lend themselves to artwork because cold fingers don't easily grasp the ballpoint pen, which was my tool of choice here, or watercolor pencils, which I had intended to use for color.   I have my photographs from which I can add color here at home if I want.  But do I want to?  I may leave this sketchbook black-and-white. 
 
 Uh oh, I've run out of time.   More later!  Any comments about color or no color?  

My South African Safari ends, alas!

The ibis skull is about 9" long.

I was having a great deal of fun at Panzi Bush Camp.  The folks there have made a collection of skulls and interesting seedpods which I took the opportunity to photograph and sketch.  The Hadeda Ibis was particularly fascinating, and it earned a page in my sketch journal, along with two views of a baboon skull.

Hadeda Ibis and baboon skulls

The African Porcupine has dug a den in this hillock

Bev took me out back and showed me the earthen  bank where the porcupine lives, tunneling into a hillock just behind the kitchen. It sometimes wanders in the back door and into the office to say hi to Glynn, but it didn't happen while I was there. Guess I'll just have to go back and try again....


Five days at Panzi wasn't nearly long enough to sketch and draw everything that caught my interest, although by now I was needing a break from sketch journaling. I think two weeks is about optimum for me if I'm sketching and journaling hours each day.  It can be exhausting (although exciting and exhiliarating ~ go figure!), and by now I was nearing the end of my third week.  

"my" yellow orchids

I spent some time lounging on my little chalet deck gazing dreamily up at the gorgeous yellow orchids growing in the tree above, and lazily sketching a fat skink (a lizard)  that liked to bask in the splashes of sun on the deck railing.

sketching the skink

One morning I rode into Hoedspruit with Glynn and John to shop for souvenirs and exchange some dollars for rands.

There are some really nice shops in Hoedspruit, but I mostly shopped at the outdoor craftsmen's displays, which have a lot more cachet than a modern shop. I bought a couple of charming carved creatures ~ a hornbill, and a hippo in a carved stone pool, from the man in the picture below.  

Craftsmen and their wares on a Hoedspruit roadside.

Nothing lasts forever, and after five wonderful Panzi days of sketching and exploring, bush-walking with Glynn and chatting with Bev and John, it was time to leave.  Glynn drove me into Hoedspruit to catch my shuttle to Johannesburg, where I caught my plane home.  

my plane taxis into its berth

 On the back of the plane seat in front of me was a screen upon which I could watch movies or switch to an airplane's-tail view of the scenery. We took off at about sunset, and chased the moon across the Atlantic, arriving, 17 hours later at dawn, on the east coast of the US. This is the view from the tail of the plane taxiing into the airport at NYC after crossing the Atlantic.   I was home again.

If I'd blogged this last August, I would have waxed poetic and told you some more tales, but I have been working on my South African Sketching Safari sketchbook and tutorial ever since I got home and I am just about waxed out.  
 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The cover of the new South African Sketching Safari sketch journal.

The sketchbook and its tutorial is finally finished, and I finally got it uploaded this morning. It took me a couple of days to write the code for the new webpage and make all the connections to other pages on my website and to the server so that you can download your own copy, but now,  TA-DAH!  It is done!  

If you'd like to learn more about what's inside, go here to its page for a closer look, and I hope you'll be tempted to download a copy to see more.  It's more than a hundred pages, and it took me six months to create, so $9.95 is a pretty good deal I think.

My next sketch journal will be done in Saguaro National Park near Tucson.  Watch for it! If you put your name in the alerts box at upper right, you will be notified when I blog about it.  In the meantime, have a happy holiday, and I'll blog again soon.  

Ho! Ho! Ho!

A New Day at Panzi Bush Camp

My chalet at Panzi Bushcamp

The next morning, Glynn arrived at Marc's Treehouse Lodge to pick me up and carry me off to continue my South African odyssey at Panzi Bush Camp.  Panzi is a small reserve with boardwalks radiating out from an open veranda/dining room to little A-frame chalets.  The railed boardwalks which rise up through ravines to the rooms allow close-up views of the ravine vegetation as it arches alongside and over the path. 

My room was the furthest distant one from the dining room, at my request, to be closest to the viewing deck and waterhole, and I was within breathing distance of any passing wildlife, which I knew might include the resident porcupine or bushbucks, or passing hyenas and baboons, to name a few, which gave an exciting tang to the whole experience.  At night I would hear baboons and hyenas, and unknown things rustling around in the thornbushes.  Exciting!

The boardwalk to my chalet

 
To my delight, the A-frame had a tiny deck on the front end with a couple of deck chairs in which I could sit for sketching. I would spend lots of time here writing and coloring my sketches.  

My sketching gear and bird book

Here's my gear ~ my sketchbook, bag full of art gear (watercolor pencils and waterbrush, pencil sharpener, extra pens and all that other fun stuff we journalers like to play with) plus the pretty wooden bowl I had bought from a local artisan, in which I kept the interesting things I picked up along the trail, like seedpods, feathers, etc.  

My bushbuck sketch

An inquisitive bushbuck doe

After getting settled, I stepped outside to be met by this gentle bushbuck doe, a mere six feet from my my door. I was struck by her bright orange coat and liquid, black eyes, and although she didn't stick around more than a few moments, I took several photos of her which turned into one of my favorite sketches.

Notice the plant beside her in the sketch?  This is the Mother-In-Law's tongue which is found as a houseplant in many American homes and offices.  I was fascinated to find it poking up at random spots under thorn bushes in the South African soil, so I included one beside the little bushbuck. I'd never seen a Mother-in-law's Tongue plant outside a house or pot before.  They say travel is broadening. If so, it widens one's mind in the oddest places. . .

Glynn, Bev, John, and Margaret ~ plus Sally the dog and Kitty.

I was ready to relax, now, after all my game drives and moving from treehouse to treehouse at Marc's Treehouse Lodge, and Panzi was the ideal spot to do it.  Run by a family which includes Glynn, who used to be a park ranger, his mom Bev and dad John, and Margaret who takes care of the rooms, I felt very comfortable in the homey atmosphere.  

Most guests don't stick around during the day and lodges don't generally provide lunch, so I had come prepared to feed myself midway through each day with energy bars. This had added quite a bit of weight to my luggage, but it was essential unless I wanted to lose some weight (not a bad idea, but being hungry makes me grumpy and not inclined to sketch or write in my journal). 

Breakfast at Panzi Bush Camp

But Bev kept a fruit bowl supplied in case I got a yen for a banana, and coffee or tea was always available, which pleased me mightily.  And in my opinion Bev and John could cook for a 4-star restaurant if they chose.  Look at this classy breakfast!  Dinners were incredibly good, too,

The elevated viewing deck provided a great view of the waterhole, particularly at dawn and dusk, and I spent a lot of time birdwatching and keeping an eye out for wildlife.  

A kudu stops by the waterhole

One evening I watched a hamerkop (a big bird with a head like a hammer (which is what its Dutch name means) bathing at the water's edge. I saw kudu bucks visit in the dawn light, posing self-consciously as I watched through binoculars and sketched furiously in my sketchbook. 

All that remains of an ostrich

Glynn took me on a couple of walks in the bush, where we checked out termite mounds and antelope tracks in the dusty trail, and found a pile of ostrich feathers and the ostrich's skull, all that was left of a leopard's midnight feast.  

Giraffe with ox-pecker

The walks were terrific.  I had a chance to get so close to a giraffe that we were looking UP into its face as it placidly chewed its cud and gazed back down at us.  Notice the ox-pecker clinging to the side of its face ~ these birds remove (and eat) ticks and other parasites from larger herbivores. I wonder how they figure out it's not a good idea to remove a tick from a lion.......?  

We also found a zebra skeleton and skull, leftovers from another leopard kill.  There are leopards at Panzi Bush Camp, but not lions, because the lions can't get through the fence.  

Aloe tree

There are fascinating things growing out in the bush.  I really enjoyed the aloe trees, with clusters of big seedpods and thorny leaves.  The ravines around which Panzi Bush Camp is built are also beautiful, although they can be a big problem in the summer when the rains drain down off the Drakensburg Escarpment to sluice through such ravines as these.  

Rocky ravine

The boardwalks at Panzi are occasionally wrecked or washed away in these floods, and roads to the camp sometimes wash out as well.  But not in the winter, which is when I was there (August). 

Uh-oh, I've run out of time.  I will finish up my saga in the next blog. I've been working on the sketchbook tutorial (like these) for several weeks, which is why so much time had elapsed since the last blog entry.  I'll try to get to the next/last one sooner!

 BTW, I wrote a review about Panzi Bush Camp for TravelAdvisor here if you want to read my recommendations.

A Final Cruise Through Kruger

me, bundled up

One final chance to see Kruger wildlife ~ not to be passed up!  So bundled in every warm item of clothing I had with me (plus a blanket for the windy back seat of the game drive vehicle) I joined another group to see the sights. 

Yet another posing kudu..

Even though we entered in through the same gate each time, our driver/guides always took different routes down branching dirt roads in pursuit of  desired sightings. 
 Our drivers often conferred with other drivers along the road, passing good sightings back and forth. On this last drive we saw some fine creatures.  
  

Kori bustard, 2' tall

Zebra family

Zebras, with their black and cinnamon stripes were a bit shy, usually moving off as we approached.  It was amusing to see every kudu buck we encountered posing majestically.  

Elephant savaging a small tree

The park has an overabundance of elephants, and you can see that they are probably overbrowsing the trees.  This wasn't the first time we encountered elephants knocking down thornbushes and trees.  It's a pretty awesome sight to see these huge animals at work.

Impala herd

Impalas are one of the more common antelopes in the park, so common, in fact, that we would have to occasionally beg the driver to stop so we could photograph them.  To the guides, these beautiful creatures are dirt-common (like stray chickens or dogs, I suppose)  ~ who'd want to take a picture of THAT? So we'd speed on past these amazing animals with their delicate features and crisp markings.   

Endangered ground hornbill pair

But the ground hornbills caught the attention of everyone, including the driver, whose job, of course, is to show his van full of people Kruger's rare and amazing animals (but chiefly the "Big Five" of course: elephant, rhino, buffalo, leopard and lion, which is what most visitors are clamoring to see). This hornbill pair was pacing along beside the road, with the male in the lead carrying a twig in his mouth with which he was courting the female.  If you look closely, you can see it here, right at the tip, a plant stem about six inches long and maybe 1/8" thick. 

A menacing Cape buffalo

 I really got a kick out of the Cape buffalo. This big bull came over to inspect our van, which made the driver understandably nervous. But most of the other buffalo were pretty blasé about our presence.  Our driver didn't let this one get much closer than about twenty feet.


We managed to see all the Big Five on this drive, and our driver was exultant ~ we didn't spot the fifth entrant, a leopard, until the very last moment, after sunset, when we were supposed to be out of the park ~ and the driver was thinking he'd failed us.  Our first intimation that there was something big ahead was the clot of cars blocking the road. We couldn't have passed if we wanted to.  

Leopard In Grass At Dusk

It was a bit harder to discover what they were looking at, but finally a car departed and we edged in close enough to spot our beleaguered victim in the dim light ~ at a distance. 

My photo is pretty dismal, but I got a halfway decent sketch of it.  
We saw all the other Big Fives that day, but the rhino was a mere blob of gray and the lions were at a terrific distance. To be honest, a great deal too much of a blather is made about "The Big Five." I much more enjoy the Little Thousands. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

My sketch of Treehouse #2

The next day, I moved into my final Treehouse.  This was the one I had originally arranged for, but due to various circumstances I managed to stay in two others, as well.  It reminded me of a Hobbit house, actually, with its polished wood door, and the trunk of the tree rising up through the floor and exiting through the ceiling.  

Treehouse #2 from below

It rose high about the Klaserie River, and while that isn't obvious in my sketch, it shows in this photo taken from below. 

Zebra tracks on the path

The next morning on the way to breakfast I came across some perfect zebra tracks in the path.  The zebras hooves are so and hard they make the tracks look like the zebras are wearing horseshoes.  Here's a set of mare and foal tracks. 

Banded mongooses

Then shortly after that, a small troop of banded mongooses (no, not mongeese) flowed across the road in front of me.  This is the closest I ever got to them.  It was a fruitful walk to breakfast (not that far, only a hundred yards or so up past the other treehouses, but full of nice surprises), so I came back later with my sketchbook to record all the interesting things I had encountered.  
Here's a page out of my sketchbook:

An "At Home" day at Marc's Treehouse Lodge

Looking downriver

I'm back from my trip to Idaho to visit my brother (that's a one-thousand-mile round trip, which kinda takes it outta ya) and now I'm ready to resume where I left off a couple of weeks ago ~ let's see....ah yes! Kruger National Park.

Sandy banks show tracks

As I've mentioned before, it is next to impossible to journal or sketch in the bouncy environs of a game drive truck, so I was getting behind on my journaling. And I was tired! Those drives are exhausting!

So I took the next day off, turning down another game drive in the park in favor of exploring the grounds at Marc's Treehouse Lodge and catching up on my journal.

This lodge is situated on the Klaserie River. The water level is low in August and the banks are bounded by bamboo-like reeds, but the river is capable of staging raging floods in other seasons. I could see the line of flotsam where the water had flooded in the past, and I heard that one of the treehouses had been swept completely clear of furniture ~ bed, mattress, everything ~ by floods last year.  

Sketching along the Klaserie River

But now it was lovely, calm and low, with lots of places to search for tracks on its sandy banks.  I sat on a huge boulder and sketched the river. Look closely at the photo, and you can see not only my shadow, but also my treehouse at the extreme upper right. 

Nyala buck

From this vantage point, and later  from my treehouse balcony, I watched a magnificent nyala buck browsing in the reeds. 

Then I followed pretty nyala antelope does around the grounds to sketch them, and caught up on my drawings from previous outings. Nyala stripes and markings are like fingerprints ~ each one is different.  And look how different the doe appears from the nyala buck!  The bucks don't hang around the treehouses like the does do, and I'm not sorry ~ with those huge horns they could be trouble.

Nyala does wander the grounds

A vervet monkey gives me the eye

I was fascinated by the bands of striped mongooses which drifted ghost-like through the grassy openings beneath the trees, and the vervet monkeys which eyed me suspiciously as I tried to edge closer for a look. These same monkeys (maybe this very one!) later broke into my treehouse and chewed off a corner of one of my wildlife guides. But I wasn't really upset ~  how could I ask for a more authentic souvenir of my South Africa trip?!

my private shower room

After this exciting day of exploring, I took a leisurely shower in my own private open-to-the-sky shower room (next to my own private outhouse). I suppose you can't expect to have a bathroom and shower in your treehouse!
Then I settled down on my balcony with my journal to finish my river sketch and watch the sunset on the Klaserie River.

Here's my river sketch page ~ can you spot the nyala buck in the reeds?