With Summer coming all-too-quickly to an end, and a BEAUTIFUL day last Wednesday, I decided to take the day off and play hooky!!! I drove up to Rock Cut State Park in Rockford.

We used to go camping there all the time as kids, so it was a bit of a flashback! Such a beautiful day hiking around the lake a couple times… logging in some good miles of beautiful scenery… and a very relaxing & much needed day off!

CAUTION ALERT – – –
And after a LOT of beautiful scenery… of course we had to have a bit of reality! Which of course is totally fine by me… I have a strange attraction to roadkill. The whole “circle of life” thing I guess.

With the cool weather setting in so quickly this weekend, looks like some of Rosene’s outdoor succulents have made the trip indoors… most likely for the rest of the year!!! I’m sure they’ll be looking forward to getting back outside next Spring as soon as possible… just like ME!!!

One of the challenges of catching splashy photos on a windy morning is that the “mist” keeps hitting the camera lens! So you pretty much need to dry the lens after every shot… or every crashing wave. It gets a little tiresome… but if you don’t wipe it off, you get THIS!!!

Which now that I look at it… this isn’t too shabby either?!!
Hard to mess up a beautiful sunrise, huh?!

It was SO good to see colorful sunrise clouds again… and the crashing waves didn’t hurt any either! It was a big sky morning… which required a big sky photo!!!

Though we’re still in the last few days of Summer, this morning definitely felt like a crisp Fall day! I even had to pull out the long sleeves & gloves!!! But it was well worth it… another fun bike ride with a LOT of stuff going on along the lakefront. Lots of clouds. Lots of wind. LOTS of waves!!! Not to mention the amazing colors!!!

So yesterday was “National Guacamole Day”… and did anyone feel “obligated” to celebrate besides me?! Yummy nachos solely for the observance of this auspicious holiday.

Thank You Big Star for the extra guacamole & extra cheese!!!

Spent some time in the studio finishing up a couple batches of new test tiles. I think I want to do two more batches with two more kinds of clay. Then I can bisque them and start the actual glaze tests. I’ve been wanting to clean out & update my studio glazes for awhile now. Guess after five months I’ve waited long enough…

Dark & cloudy with waves crashing all around. It seemed like the “smoky-haze” has mostly moved on… only to be replaced with a chilling wind & dark gloomy clouds! Tough pedaling this morning as the wind seemed to be coming at me from every direction!

Another beautiful day with the Fall colors just starting to pop out. A little too early for the “full Fall” color show… but still beautiful. So I decided to take the day to “play hooky” and hike around Rock Cut State Park in Rockford, Illinois. We used to camp here a lot when we were kids, so there were quite a few childhood flashbacks along the way! A great day to kick-back, relax and hike around the lake… THREE TIMES!!!

Another beautiful day to get out

Another morning with that hazy-smoky “filter” across the sky. It’s kinda weird to see the sun rising without a single cloud in the sky… and yet still somehow oddly “clouded” and NOT bright & shiny like one would expect it to be.

And if we’re having this kind of effects from the California wildfires here in Chicago… I can only imagine how much worse it gets as you get closer to the actual fires. Just one more thing making 2020 so “special” for everyone!!!