"Well my bags are packed, I'm ready to go"

Just a couple more days before we leave so we are getting things packed. It's hard to pack things while you are still using them, but that's what you've got to do. I needed to pack my paints so I finished off one last work before I put them away. If you read in an earlier post about the perils of plein air painting, you may remember that I started a small painting along the highway that leads up to Flagstaff along Oak Creek. The creek was high at the time so it made it difficult to get to the edge. But there was a snow-melt runoff coming down from the opposite side of the canyon from the creek. I decided to try to find a place to set up, out of the severe wind, to try to capture a small scene. After trying a number of spots, I finally crawled down to a location where a drainage pipe carried the water under the road and into the creek. I was below the road and just a couple of feet off of it at this point so I thought I would be sheltered from the wind. What I didn't count on was the amount of dirt/sand and debris kicked up by cars as they barrelled along above me. I got my easel set up (actually one that George Ransom loaned me)and balanced myself on a few small, shakey boulders to try to capture a very small scene of the water running over the rocks on its way under the road to the creek. As the conditions seemed to worsen as the wind and traffic picked up, I blocked in the composition, took some references photos and climbed out of the drainage ditch to paint another day. Here is my 8x10 attempt at capturing falling water....