Showing posts with label douglas_az. Show all posts
Showing posts with label douglas_az. Show all posts

Sunday, March 14, 2010

A Day In Douglas- An Arizona Border Town

A day for a bicycle ride



And taking pictures




of textured walls






And looking skyward



And downward for patterns and wear





Distress and age





Signs of Spring and bursts of Color





Habitations





Old wood





Spring Green Willows





Old shacks





A quonset




And Crumbling Adobe




We had an idea the other day to take our bikes to the town of Douglas to explore. Now that we have an old beater pickup truck it's no problem to load up and go. We bought this truck specifically to assist my husband in his penchant for bring Very Large Rocks (VLR's) home. Our Arizona yard is getting paved with a beautiful assortment with these VLRs.

We picked Douglas mainly because it's flat. I haven't been doing much bike riding this year prefer flatlander bike riding until my bike muscles adjust.

It's so nice to have a partner that enjoys stopping to collect things and take photo breaks just as I do. It felt like the first real spring day. We've had an average of ten degrees F colder than last winter. We woke up to an inch of snow the morning before.

We started out at the funkier side of town on dirt roads exploring old shacks and the like and made our way to the historic district after a bit. We stopped in to take a tour of our friend Patricia's place of employment- Headstart which I hope to write about later as I was so impressed with what they are doing at this facility.

Along the way I picked up my usual bits and pieces, rusty bottle caps, a roadsmithed tin tile, and found an abandoned church with a junk pile behind it that yielded some stained glass and a broken aged mirror with some shards that I'm sure I can put to use.


Feel free to use the wall and fence photos for background in your creations if you wish. I'm not sure what the ideal dpi is. Let me know if you need better resolution for your purposes and I can send them to you.







Thursday, December 24, 2009

Pretty Exalted Girl and Benign Girl







Kind of a funny Christmas this year. We're rather far from our family members and our local friends are out of town. We had our festivities already with a party over the weekend. My friend Rosalie surprised me with a gift of an antique porcelain doll head which was funny because she hadn't read my blog and and we were out of touch enough for her not to have any idea that I had begun collecting them. When I showed her the collection she then lavished me with several more pieces!

We took a jaunt out to our new property on a fine sunny day, exploring the nearby trashed out shack and found the most wonderful pile of partially painted and nicely rusted metal tiles that will make perfect little canvases for altered art pieces.

When I find myself in new places for the holidays I like to create new traditions. Last year
we had stopped in the border town of Douglas. My favorite thing is to go through the Mexican style dollar stores that have mariachi music blasting out on the sidewalks and throngs of people that have come over the border for their Christmas shopping. Two thirds of the license plates on the street seemed to be from Sonora. It was on our way home so I suggested that we stroll through again this year.

Rosalie and I got such a kick out of "Pretty Exalted Girl" doll that we each couldn't resist buying one.
The funny thing is that most of the goods are from China but they don't have the typical dollar store assortments. I just couldn't resist a couple of these 99 cent toys with their botched translation labels. I'm sure I'll find a use for the Mother Mary earrings in some project or another.

We finished our festive jaunt in the Saddle and Spur Tavern of the historic Gadsden Hotel.