Searching for Sunflowers

North Dakota Field 8x8 WELL, IT TURNS OUT that North Dakota - not South Dakota - is the No. 1 producer of sunflowers in the country. South Dakota is No. 2. Of course, we went to South Dakota in part for sunflowers, but mostly for Carol's dig at Paleo Adventures.  We come back through North Dakota, which has a great attitude toward its sunflowers - the state recognizes that sunflower tourism is a thing, and the North Dakota Tourism Council has a regularly updated map on its website  that directs you to where the sunflowers are blooming.  After a long drive through South Dakota, we stop in a North Dakota gas station that looks like it might be very dirty and scary. But we've been driving for a ways and at this point, necessity triumphs over perceived hygiene. To our delight, the station is surprisingly clean, and includes a restaurant of sorts. I ask a table full of older people (yes, I am probably as old as them) about any sunflower fields in bloom in the area, and they stop an

Spearfish Canyon, 8x10 I DECIDE TO VISIT Spearfish Canyon on a day when Carol Baney is digging for fossils and I am on my own.  The canyon, and the drive down into it, is one of the scenic attractions of the South Dakota Black Hills, and I see why. The road is lined by towering crags and spires, with pine trees and other plants growing from and around them.  Over the centuries, rivers and streams carved the canyon and still run today, making waterfalls that are visible from the road, and from hiking trails that cross the area.  One of the most visible and well-known of the Spearfish Canyon waterfalls is Bridal Veil, which is running abnormally thinly because of the drought that is changing life in the west and southwest.  In South Dakota, according to drought.gov , 68 percent of the land is abnormally dry. Over 39 percent of the state, drought has had an impact on grain crops and has stressed livestock. Severe drought has hit 7.8 percent of the state, and extreme drought 2.7 percent. 

Belle Field, 12x24 THE SECOND DAY of Carol's dig, I set out with the thought of possibly heading to Buffalo, Wyoming, home of Chief Longmire - and of Craig Johnson, writer of the Longmire series. It's a couple hours away, is beautiful and fun, and there's lots to paint there.  But I am waylaid first by a delicious breakfast at the Black Hills Diner (more on this enlightened place below) and then by The Black Hills Pioneer, a surprisingly and delightfully rich daily paper. I read the whole thing and decide to stop in at the paper's office in Spearfish, find the editor and let him know what a great job I think he's doing. Not that my opinion would matter, but I remember how rare it was, as the editor, that anyone said anything good.  As I'm driving there, I see a beautiful, bright field with low weedy sunflowers in the background, and the sun on it, and the bales and trees and grasses capture my eye and heart, and I stop and set up and paint.  Hours later, I find

  On the Road to Hulett East, above, and West, below. Both are 5x7 AS CAROL HEADS OFF to her archaeological dig, I head out to the land around Belle Fourche, South Dakota, to see what I can see and paint what I can paint.  The West begins to show itself in the bones of the plains landscape here. I can see mountains in the distance, and the close-in hills are sharper, rockier than they've been, except, of course, for on the mountain drives. The towns and villages have a western feel, and some, like Hulett, and the teeny (population 15) Aladdin have built the west into their structures.  Farms give way to ranches, and corn to hay. Baling is in full swing. Horses watch me from fenced corrals, and somehow even the pickups look like ranch trucks, not farm trucks. But the sky is huge and unobstructed, and though it is the height of the tourist season, outside of the tourist meccas, there's pretty much no one around.  I pull off the road to paint a small landscape, and then turn the