June 24 -- I set up my "studio"

 This morning, I watched the sunrise from the front porch of my casita. Then, a soaking rain shower dampened the next few hours.

One of the park rangers set up a spectacular studio for the artists-in-residence this season. This morning I settled in to this studio space.

This space is located in the visitor center along a corridor between the ticket-selling area and the cavern entrance/elevator. Consequently, I am quite visible here. A significant number of visitors engaged me in conversation today. One of my favorite conversations today was with a precocious young girl who might have been eight or 10 years old. She asked me, "What is an artist in residence?" It was such a simple question that I had never even thought about that before. 

I got warmed up by doing three watercolor sketches today.

One of the rangers caught this camel spider. If you Google it, you will learn that it's not really a spider, but related to both spiders and scorpions.

And then driving home after work this afternoon, I saw this tarantula walking across the road, so I stopped my car and got out and watched it. I remeber as a boy, my childhood friend, Jay Aiken, had a black and white B-movie of a giant tarantula attacking a city (like Godzilla). 

A storm was blowing in as I was leaving work. More raindrops!

Amazon was able to find me here and today delivered an audiobook that I had ordered (on CD). It is BLIND DESCENT by Nevada Barr. Nevada Barr has authored a full series of books featuring Anna Pigeon as the heroine. Anna is a National Park Service Ranger, with each book set in a different national park. BLIND DESCENT is set in Carlsbad National Park, but not in the main Carlsbad Cavern – – it is set in the Lechuguilla Cavern. Lechuguilla Cavern was not found until around 1984 and is not open to the public. Its location within Carlsbad National Park remains a protected secret and it is only open for scientific exploration. It's reported to have more than 148 miles of cavern, whereas only about 34 miles have been explored in the main Carlsbad Cavern.

Doing this blog will be a bit challenging because there's no Wi-Fi at Carlsbad. I'm using my cell phone as a hotspot, but at most, it only has two bars of service. Even so, I want to share my experiences here with my friends, and I think this may be the easiest way to communicate.