In Which I Stretch Out the Usual Stuff with Extra Photos

 Since I haven't much to report upon lately other than "walked a lot" and "stitched needlepoint a lot", this past week I decided that clearly more photos were needed, so I snapped some while on one of my walks.  It's not really all that exciting, but it's better than nothing!

You've all seen pics from my typical walks along the Columbia River trail, and from the nature reserves, so for a change, I chose this walk instead:

The route ran from the Washington State University branch campus up through the research district, then over to the river and back to the campus.  This is part of the campus near the starting point:

This is the campus "garden".  It consists of several large chunks of basalt and a whole lot of sagebrush.

Here we see the main road through the large research area, which includes Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Batelle NW, the US Dept of Energy, and lots more fun science/technology stuff:

At the end of the district you will find the conning tower from the USS Triton -- a nuclear powered sub that was the first to circumnavigate the world completely submerged.

This is pretty much the halfway point of the walk, and there's a small public space with benches which makes for a lovely resting spot.

After a brief rest, I headed back along the river.

The trail takes one past a manufacturing plant (seen in the distance) which makes ingredients such as emulsifiers that are used in food production.

Here's a spot called the Arid Lands Preserve (part of the WSU campus) where more sagebrush has been kindly left alone for, as the sign that you can't see well in this photo claims, "the enjoyment of all."  Hm.

Wasn't that a thrilling look at some of the fine scenery that I typically get to see on my walks around Richland?  Whee!

As for my virtual walk along Hadrian's Wall, I had to make a push during the last week to finish, because the forecast warned that wildfire smoke and temps above 100 were in the near future.  I had been averaging four miles a day, but upped it to over five during that final week's effort:

I managed to beat the heat and smoke with about four hours to spare.  Whew!  All told, for this challenge I walked 92 miles in 23 days.  

I've been stuck at home for several days now due to that smoke and heat, which started to clear yesterday.  The walks shall resume as soon as I figure out where to virtually walk next.

As for the art practice sessions, our first pic was this bonsai, which had rather intestinal looking roots:

I didn't care for either the pot or the background, so opted to zoom in on one section, which I rendered just in pencil:

I found the pic for our next session far more inspiring -- this doorway at Tintagel:

I loved the view of the cliffs and water, which made for a fun challenge.  I used pencil and watercolor for this one:

Now for a Pippin update:  he is back to normal activity, and going on longer walks.  But I'm being careful about restricting his opportunities to jump up and down off the furniture, which is not good for dachshund backs.  He can handle short steps, though, which are all over the house:

He also enjoys hanging out in the many dog beds scattered about the place:

Such a sweetie!

Finally, the weekly update on the Good Omens needlepoint project.  

I've gone over the one-third mark!   Whoo hoo!!!  It's been five weeks since I started, and I've now completed 12,000 of the 34,340 stitches in this piece.  It's exciting to see the figures' heads begin to appear!

So I'll keep plugging away at that, and will go for more walks, and that's about it for the news from this corner of the world.

Have a wonderful week out there!