Arizona | cmoorelife

Inktober 2017: Day nineteen

I’m at Horseshoe Bend, Arizona and it’s raining, which makes it feel like Symonds Yat in the UK.

Whilst I sketch, a Chinese woman asks my partner to take her picture. She gradually edges towards me, until eventually, she squats down right next to me, puts her arm around my shoulder, and grins for the camera. She doesn’t look at me, or talk to me. Now that never would have happened in the Forest of Dean.

Another trippy ink moment

Look no vertigo!

I left Page with some sadness when the radio announced that I could have got 10% off at the lube shop. Only if I turned up in my Halloween costume though. Still I’m not one to dwell on missed opportunities.

A quick stop at the Glen Canyon Dam. 15 feet shy of the Hoover dam.

A Baby Driver moment, as Stairway to heaven played on the radio, through rippled Arizona plains. The sky was full of little fluffy clouds, which gave an added sense of the sheer vastness out there. The biggest sky I’ve ever seen!

Then just before Zion National Park, the Buffalo came.

Inktober 2017: day seventeen

By Claire Moore

Walked part of the Bright Angel trail in the Grand Canyon today. I felt quite intrepid until someone overtook me uphill, carrying a baby.

Almost a private studio at the mile and a half resthouse

Another picture of me looking smug

So hard to capture the light as it shifts so fast

I love that when you enter the South rim of the Canyon, you are greeted with pictures of deer and elk, in ever increasing states of ecstasy.

Should come with an age rating

Inktober 2017: day sixteen

By Claire Moore

Bluff and I got off to a bad start last night. First I mistook the town laundrymat for our hotel (it’s huge). Then I found myself driving through the dark, deserted town on the left hand side. Whoops!

I admit I had fairly low expectations for Bluff fort, but this great museum and its dedicated volunteers really bring to life the story of the town’s first white settlers.

Bluff fort has numerous log cabins, lovingly furnished by the ancestors of the first white settlers

I was struck by the Native American attitude to the land, contrasted with the white settlers who literally blasted their way through rocks, adapting the landscape to meet their unbending needs and faith.