Watercolor sketches across the US

My 22 yo son and I did a road trip across the US recently. We traveled from upstate New York to Nevada in a rented Ford Transit van. Part of this was because we needed to move some household items, and another part was just wanting to have an excuse for this road trip. I brought a little watercolor sketchbook with me to document the journey. This is Arches cold press 6x12 in book. The format is a bit too limiting, but the quality of paper is the best out of many books I tried. I wish Arches made different formats for sketchbooks.

We started from Rochester NY. This is the courtyard of the Memorial Art Gallery. They have a sculpture garden, which in the past few years got a few very questionable additions (not shown here). This sculpture is something like a broken lego toy, cute:

There were some amazing hydrangeas in bloom around, and I had to document that!

Instead of taking interstate 90 across, we went south to meet up with friends for a lunch in the beautiful Amish country, PA. After that we took interstate 70 across, which IMO is a very beautiful middle-latitude route across the US.

View of St Louis, MO from our hotel:

We stopped for lunch at a BBQ joint in Kansas City, which wasn’t too far from I-70 and was highly rated on the web. It did not disappoint! Had to stand in line to get in, but so worth it. Slap’s BBQ:

We drove for a few days through increasingly flattening and opening landscape. I found hay rolls an interesting subject to compose. Perhaps will investigate in future paintings. After all, Monet made a big artistic deal out of haystacks! Hay fields somewhere in the Great Plains:

Lots of beautiful cattle as subjects:

We met a coyote :)

and encountered stormy weather in the Great Plains:

In Colorado we took the route via Colorado Springs to Aspen, going over the most stunning highway pass in the US, the Continental Divide. The road is not for faint hearted, it is narrow and twists up to breath taking 12,095 ft! The mountains were covered in snow:

The Rockies are absolutely stunning:

Colorado high plains:

In Utah-Nevada desert we saw lots of wild (feral) horses:

and cows (these are just grazing on miles of open land):

Finally, after a week of travel, we are almost home! Carson Valley, NV: