How I Price My Artwork

 I've been making ceramic pieces for over 30 years, so I've had a lot of experience with pricing.  There are many factors that go into what I charge for a piece.  I'll try to cover some of them.  And maybe it's because I've done this type of work for so long, but I don't adhere to any of the many equations floating around that tell you what to charge for a piece.  It's much, much, much more complex than any simple formula. The point is you (I) have to make a living but get reasonably paid for your (my) work.

• First, complexity of the piece, how long it takes to make it, how long it takes to paint it.  How much work goes into it.  How hard was it to make.  While some complex pieces aren't necessarily hard to make, some other apparently simple pieces are very difficult to make.
• Second, its weight and size; so what it costs me to package it and ship it.  
• Next, (not third, because these following considerations have no real order) how original is the piece.  How unique is it?  Is it a one-of-a-kind that I most likely will never make again?
• How much I must clear after all costs per piece to make a reasonable profit (I have bills to pay, food to eat, etc.)
• Referring to my original, standard pieces such as the animal masks and similar wall pieces, their popularity, literally how much people are willing to pay.  These pieces have survived and evolved over the 30-something years I've been making them, so they have over time a lot of work in them, if that makes sense.  
• How much do *I* like the piece?  This is a big one for me.  If I love a piece, I am going to charge more for it, whether or not it makes sense, because it's a one-time creation from my mind.  Even if I make similar subsequent pieces, which I may even charge less for, that first one is extremely important to me, and I think it deserves a higher price.
• Lastly, the "going rate" for similar items.  This one doesn't concern me very much.  I have seen some people asking what I consider a ridiculously high price for a piece, and maybe that works for them.  I've seen other people asking way, way too little for their work, which devalues their entire body of work.  So there's a bit of "magic" going on in this last consideration.  There's a saying called "what the market will bear,"  which is variable with time, popularity of a certain style, the zeitgeist of a particular time, even larger, world or political circumstances, what's going on currently, has gone on, etc. 

I think this list probably only covers a small part of how I price my items, but it's a good start.  It's worked pretty well for me.  I know I've made some really large pieces that I alone could not sell and earn a decent income from them, but the galleries who bought them were able to make more than I would ever dream of making for one of my pieces.  But they have the real estate, the clientele, the "scenery," etc.  I no longer make those pieces.  The risk of a flaw that would make them in my opinion not salable, the sh,eer weight and size of them made them not worth it for me, the cost of materials, the cost of shipping, etc., to me is not worth the income from them.

And one final thing:  I (You must...) love, love my work, so that's the most important thing of all.  I can pay my bills, have some left over, and know that I, and the loyal buyers I have, love what I do.

A Bit About my Studio

 Well, first of all, my studio is rather small, just one room where I actually make my pieces.  In it I have three main stations, plus a storage closet where I put in-progress pieces and pieces that are drying, waiting for the kiln.  First, I have the "building" area, where I keep my clay, hundreds of pounds of it,  and have a work table where I actually make each piece.  I have way, way too many small tools, but each one is useful in some way.  Some tools I keep in a small jar, and they are the ones I use every time I build.  Others, and there are many, are kept within reach because you never know when you need just the right shape to tweak a spot on a piece.  

Next, beside my building tabke,  is a smaller area where I keep my potter's wheel.  I don't like to just throw bowls, mugs, etc., but the wheel very useful to throw, say, a dog or cat, or bird's body, a head of an animal, or sometimes just an odd shape that I need to support a complicated piece I'm making.  I might add that while my studio appears messy, I am very scrupulous with recycling nearly every dust-grain of clay.  

And finally, my painting area.  I have a largish round table, around 4 feet in diameter, that turns.  On it I have I think 8, maybe 7, 12" turntables.  I put a single piece to be painted on each small turntable, so I can efficiently paint up to 8 pieces at a time just by turning the big table. 

To the side, I have yet another turntable, around 2 feet in diameter, where I keep as many of my underglazes (the material I paint onto the bisque-fired pieces, which I paint onto each piece before I glaze and fire it again.  The underglazes are I think the most expensive part of my business.  Each pint jar of my underglazes costs around $60, and I go through a LOT of underglaze.   I have to paint a minimum of 2 layers and most often three onto each piece I make, so I waste nothing in this area! And my brushes are quite expensive, too, and wear out rather fast because of the coarseness of the bare fired clay surface. 

Also, I have to add that I am clean but rather disorderly in my studio ("messy-desk syndrome"), but it works well for me.  I try at the end of a day of building to reorganize my worktable for the next day of work.  Same with my painting area.  I have "lids" that I use to cover each underglaze jar, and I'm scrupulous about being sure that I cover everything at the end of a painting session.  

In addition to my studio, I have a packing/shipping room, where I store and pack for shipping each piece that I've made and sold.  I also keep some boxes and packing materials in there, but the bulk of my packing materials are kept in yet another room, which is often packed to the ceiling with boxes, bubble-wrap, peanuts, etc.  Very expensive stuff!!  But I recycle as many packing materials as I can, too.  It's good for my costs, good for the earth.  Various galleries in my vicinity, in fact, call me when they have a reasonable amount of packing materials I can pick up and recycle.  

Finally, I have a kiln room, where obviously I keep my two kilns, my slab-roller, more shelves for in-progress pieces, and my glaze buckets (my least favorite of all my jobs, I think).  It's messy, fussy, often unpredictable.  In fact, it's the one area where I'm most likely to ruin a piece -- or at least make it less than what I'm willing to accept as a "good" piece which I can/will sell.  (Although, my granddaughter recently gave me a practical way to keep some of these pieces out of landfills:  I can offer them, a couple of times a year, at a greatly discounted price.  We shall see. I need to think about it more.)

This "Old" Theme Again -- Continued

 Anyway -- I tend to talk too long -- I got my master's and started my doctorate program.  Unfortunately, I had some major ethical problems (something that was recurrent throughout my experimental psychology/neuroscience studies) with a demand by my advisor that I do exploratory brain surgery on animals that were not anaesthetized.   I refused, released my lab animals (pigeons at the time), and left the university, never to return.  Further, from that point on, I became vegetarian and have been so up to today, and that's around 35 years now.  I won't get all preachy about it, but it's my firm conviction that I chose the correct path in this instance, even if it ended my neuroscience career.  (Looking back, I think it was the best outcome, even if I do feel awful about having given up on a goal I had set for myself.

On how I became an artist:  It turned out around this time that I realized my daughter needed to be home-schooled for a while due to some problems she was having due to her rather severe dyslexia, so being a single parent (her father died when she was 7), I realized I needed to be able to work from home.  Soooooo, with no training, I started making papier mache animal sculptures.  I chose this path because while she was still at school, she brought home a school project, a half of a milk jug, covered with newspaper and glue and painted.  That little thing inspired me so much that I began right away learning to sculpt with papier mache.  I did that for quite a few years and made a pretty good living doing so.  Some years later, I switched to ceramic clay and have been doing it -- and doing paintings as well -- ever since.  I did quit doing the paintings only very recently because I just found it too stressful, and I did prefer working with clay anyway -- and still do to this day.

Ok, on being old again now:  For you younger people, it really, really isn't as awful as it may seem -- really!  At 79, I feel physically fit and strong as I felt a couple of decades ago at least.  I'm sure things have slowed down a bit more than I'm aware, but I still do pretty much what I've always done.  My clay work is quite physically demanding (not so much as it was when I did the large sculptures, but I quit doing those for another reason besides weight, etc.), I walk at a quite fast pace at least a mile and a half a day, most often more.  I do strength-maintenance exercises daily, do physically demanding gardening daily -- because I love it! -- I eat well, focusing on getting enough protein and calories especially.  

My interests are wide, and for the most part, my mind is the same, although I do admit there I have mostly good days but sometimes some "slow" ones.  I especially forget what I was about to do -- all the time!  

And all these things are just normal things that an active person of any age would be doing without thinking about their age.  Oh, I do have a tiny bit of arthritis in my fingers, but they don't ever, ever hurt, just look funny.  Also, speaking of looks, that's the one thing that is absolutely different!  I think I've mentioned it already, but it deserves being mentioned again, I guess.  I look old!  It's that simple.  I used to be vain, so it serves me right!  Now I'm still learning to accept that it's okay to look old; I'm still the same person, so it really doesn't matter.  And I do struggle with keeping my weight up, too, which I hear is a common problem with old people.  But I've already mentioned that.  I need to make myself eat enough food each day.  

Medically, I guess you could call me lucky, but I like to think it's because of the lifestyle I live, I have had no major age-related problems -- so far, anyway.  I injured both a shoulder and a hip somehow but refused medical intervention and chose my own physical therapy instead, and the range of motion in each is a very little reduced, but it's no problem at all.  

Okay, that's enough story-telling and bragging, I guess.  It makes me think of my great grandfather, whom I used to spend hours at a time listening to him talk about the old times.  Those are some of my best life memories, in fact.  He was born in the late 1800s and lived to 98 (my great grandmother lived to 97), so I was lucky enough to know them both very well and have them be a very important part of my life.  

This "Old" Theme Again

 Well, tomorrow is my birthday, 79th.  I always get really really down when my birthday rolls around (way too often!), and I end up poring through all the years of my now longer life.  And I do realize that each day is another day gone, but birthdays are a milestone (yearstone) when we take stock of what we've done, what we've not done, what we wish we had or hadn't done, etc.  I'm in that mode now.

I've taken paths that, looking back, I shouldn't have -- or should have seen them through, even though extenuating circumstances sometimes made me end some paths.  I've not taken paths that I looked at and chose not to follow.  What might I have seen/done down those paths.  

One path that I took I've often had a lot of regrets about.  First, let me say that I've had many "lives" in my life.  I was not the person who knew early on what I wanted to do and followed that path, straight and narrow, up to either today or retirement.  I was never cut out for that sort of life, even if it would have possibly given me a lot of satisfaction and a lot more financial security than I have today. 

  The path that I have regrets about is when in my late 30's I decided to go back to university and get a doctorate in neuroscience, which was still in its infancy but had already caught my eye. I already had a BA in English literature, but that was of no use to me with this new path, so I went back to school and got a BS in psychology, with a focus on experimental psychology.  With that degree under my belt, I went to graduate school for a doctorate in neuroscience.

I think this is getting too long now.  I'll continue it tomorrow.

Today, a Couple of New Listings on Etsy, and Gardening

 I listed the large dog with the stick in its mouth (in the photo a couple of days ago in the bottom of my kiln) and a small dog figurine that was in the kiln, too.  I try to list a couple of pieces every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  

Here's my Etsy shop if you're interested:  

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DottieDracos?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

I also still sell prints of my paintings from years earlier on Fine Art America.  At this time, I'm not doing any more paintings, but I'm known for changing my mind sometimes.

https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/dottie-dracos/shop

Gardening:  Lots of weeding and watering.  I have the usual veggie starts going well already, such as tomatoes, eggplants, serrano peppers (I love them!), and cucumbers.  I also always grow lots and lots of greens of every sort, and of course beans, onions, herbs, and garlic.  Oh, and radishes from my granddaughter - she's addicted to them.

Glaze Kiln Firing and Opening

I just opened a new glaze kiln firing this morning and thought I would show you a before and after shot.  I forgot to photograph the pieces after they had been painted with underglaze.  Maybe another time.

This firing was in my small kiln, so things are very crowded.  These days, since I don't make the large volume of  pieces that I used to, I most often use my small kiln.  To fill the large kiln would take me almost a month, so it's not often worth using it.

The top photo is taken after I've glazes the pieces.  They're still wet.   The second photo is after I fired them.  This is just a photo of the bottom shelf. 

 

Musings on Getting (Being) Old

 I'm old -- 79 years old in less than a week and want to talk about what it's like to get/be old.  I'll start with my typical old-person daily routines.    First of all, it's not nearly as bad as you younger people think it will be.  In fact, the only really bad part is that I can see the end of my life a lot more clearly than I did when I was younger.  The other pretty bad part I'll cover in depth later on, but it's the sad fact that younger people don't "see" older people.  Oh, and I'm always stunned when I look in a mirror and see an old person staring back at me!  I like what a famous actor, I think it was Helen Mirren, said a few days ago - she's 80 already.  Someone asked her how she felt about being old, and in a nutshell, she said great, that she was still alive.  I think that's a good attitude, and I can identify with it myself, too.

For now, here's what a typical day is like for me.  I wake up early because I usually go to bed early, have breakfast while I watch a couple of youtube videos that interest me.  Then most days I take a walk, about a mile and a half usually, unless it's horribly windy.  I can't bear the wind!!  I live in a beautiful rural area where walking trails are in every direction, so it's very enjoyable.  I always take my also-senior dog Ruby with me, too.  

Later, I do gardening (I have a great smallish veggie garden just outside my door).  I also feed hummingbirds and a large variety of seed-eating birds every day.  My flower garden in front of my house also needs taking care of, too, so I spend a lot of time with it. Oh, and I have a side yard that I take care of, too.  It has several trees I've grown myself, so I like to spend a bit of time looking at them.  

The rest of the day, I work.  I am passionate about my ceramic artwork, which I've done now for around 30 years.  I continue to explore new ideas and to learn something new nearly everyday, whether it be a better way to build a piece or some entirely new subject.  Lately, I've been creating some sculptures of both my granddaughter's or my own doodles.  They're so much fun!  I don't know yet if they'll sell.  If not, I'll keep them for myself  :)

I'm more fortunate than many single old people in that I live next door to my daughter and her family, so I do have interactions with them all day long, until around 4 in the afternoon, when I withdraw to my own house.  It works out great.  Having been a loner for all my life, I don't feel the need to have any other friends.  I had a friend for several years, but we have drifted apart, and that's okay with me.  There are times when I'm lonely, I admit, but I stay so busy that I don't think about it very much at all.  I feel that my life is quite full.

Every single evening I spend at least an hour reading, and it's one of the most pleasant times of my day.  I'm currently reading three books:  one by my favorite author, Emile Zola, and I don't even remember its title because I have his entire life's work and just start reading a new book when I finish an old one.  It's about a French priest who is in Italy for priestly stuff.  So far, it's rather boring, but many of his books are in the beginning.  

I'm also tackling the "world's longest book," A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" (In Search of Lost Times).  I've been reading it for months, and honestly, it's most often a total bore -- great for making me fall asleep -- but there are very often great parts that make the boring ones worth it -- he's really quite a funny guy!  And finally, I'm reading a current, non-fiction book called "Inside the Box," by David Epstein.  It's really interesting and covers a subject that has always interested me:  creativity and efficient work methods, too.  It rambles a bit, but it has a lot of interesting ideas in it.  I usually rotate the three books, reading an hour of each.

One more thing that I do and have done for many years is I spend part of every day keeping up my French language skills.  I was fortunate enough back when I was in my forties to be able to live and go to graduate school in France for about a year and a half, so I managed to learn a lot of French then.  I spoke no French when I arrived but learned very quickly how to speak well enough to get by quite well.  Also, I did come home from my lab at the university every day and study French language books, which helped a lot.  Anyway, since that time, I've only been back to France once, around 9 years ago, which was great.  But now, I continue to study, read French news articles, watch endlessly videos in French (by French people for French people) French novels, ((I'm currently reading the seemingly endless A la Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust, etc.  It is literally the longest book ever written -- look it up!)  

I had intended to go to France this autumn, but this being 2026, but I don't think I'm going to be able to.  Glad I wisely hesitated on making reservations this spring.  I don't know anyone who speaks French here in my small isolated town, so it's just something I pursue because I love it.  And you never know.  It does make me sad, though.  I was so looking forward to going and taking my granddaughter again, who hasn't been there since she was 4 years old.

I guess what I'm saying above is that just because you get old doesn't mean that your life has to be smaller; it doesn't at all. 

Still Kind of Retired

 I'm still both painting and working with clay.    Definitely choosing to play more and work less than in the past.  As my clay/painting pendulum continues to swing, I'm at this moment leaning more toward painting than clay.  As I often do, I have begun to burn out on clay for now.  I still have my commissioned work and am using my pottery wheel more all the time in my sculptures.  I have reached a point with my large dog, cat, and rooster sculptures that I can throw almost all the body parts (entire core of the animal, legs, and head) on the wheel and, with a lot of "finessing" assemble them all into a pretty good dog sculpture.  I still build the tail, ears, face parts, etc., but all the rest is thrown and assembled.  I won't say it's much easier, but at least it's different and thus more enjoyable.

I've (kind of) retired

 As I stated in my last entry, I have finally turned my wholesale business over to my daughter, Lara Mogensen.  I will still be selling a few ceramic pieces on Etsy,  (https://www.etsy.com/shop/DottieDracos) but am now doing "whatever I want to do!"  

In addition to making one-of-a-kind ceramic pieces, I'm also still painting, including doing custom paintings.  I have one going now, in fact, an absolutely gorgeous English springer spaniel, liver, who should be finished in the next week or so.  And I am painting a pretty little black-and-grey tabby cat next for another customer.  I'm not going to take more than a few custom paintings a year, though, because again, I want to do whatever I feel like doing on any given day.

Gardening has become a renewed passion for me now, too, and I've created a small but beautiful and tranquil front-yard garden.  I would do more in the rest of my yard, but the wind here in Ellensburg, WA, has other ideas.  Every time I've tried planting anything outside my small protected front yard, the wind literally blows the plants to pieces.  I just this summer bought a lot of tree starts that I hope will eventually give me a bit more calm in my yard.  Barriers such as fences provide almost no protection because the wind just blows over the top.  If I stand within around 5 feet of the fence, the air is calm.  Beyond that, it's ferocious still.

Also on the gardening subject, except for the very wet, very cool summer up to now, my vegetable garden looks better than ever -- except that my poor tomatoes and peppers are all huddled up together to try to stay warm.  I have a few little knobs here and there that under a normal summer would be nearly ripe fruits by now.  Oh, well, I have already gotten enough other goodies to call my garden this year a success.  All my "greens" and herbs have been thriving in this unusual weather this year (thanks to La Nina, I hear).  

Things are about to change, though:  The forecast for the next week is over 100 every day.  If my fruiting veggies aren't too shocked by the sudden heat, perhaps many of them will actually grow and ripen.

I also have some goodies going in my little front yard, finally.  My white seedless grape vine is overloaded with grapes this year, the raspberries I planted early this spring are finally fruiting, I have had a smattering of strawberries, and for the first time this year, my black currant bush is loaded with very yummy tiny fruits -- perfect for picking off the bush on an early evening browsing tour of my year.

All in all, (semi)retirement is a good thing.  I do get a bit lonely, but that's because of my tendencies toward being a loner.  My only friend outside my family has moved away, so I really don't socialize outside my family at all anymore, although I am considering doing some volunteer work at the local Habitat store, not only to help them out but also just for getting out among people more.  

I continue to immerse myself in the study of the French language, as I have for many years.  I don't know a single person who also speaks French, so it's a rather lonely endeavor, but I guess you could call it one of my "hobbies."  I have finally graduated to watching pretty much any streaming movie or show I can find dubbed in French with no subtitles of any sort.  I can't say I understand every single word, but I certainly follow the story perfectly well.  Plus I continue to read books written in French by French authors every single day.  It's a very rewarding pursuit. I should add that there are no French language groups or organizations such as l'Alliance Francaise, anywhere near Ellensburg, by the way, so I'm totally on my own.  That's okay, though.  I can handle it.

I had planned way, way back in 2019 to go to France again in 2020, but we all got sidelined with all our plans back then.  This year, I just still don't feel comfortable going yet.  Maybe 2023 will work for me.  We'll see.  

Not that anyone's interested, but more to come, anyway.  Just my musings.

Making Lots of Ceramic Animal Sculptures

 I've been getting a lot of orders for my large (to me) ceramic animal sculptures lately, and it's been quite a tough go, but I'm getting through them slowly.  

Generally, I can work at a pretty good pace and get a couple done a week, but now, due to a recent hand injury, I'm moving much, much more slowly.  I am a right-handed person generally, but when I sculpt, for some reason, my left hand is dominant.  Unfortunately, the flexor tendon for my thumb in my left wrist just snapped recently, and now I cannot bend my left thumb.  I had no idea how vexing and how incapacitating such an injury could be.  And, unfortunately, because I live in a small town, I guess, the medical community are dragging their feet getting me set up for surgery.  In the meantime, I'm trying my best to get these sculptures done, albeit slowly, because after the surgery, I won't be able to use my left hand for at least a couple of months.  

I have a few that I had already completed before the injury, and I'll post photos of them in a day or two.  Some of the ones I'm building now, I'll show them in their in-progress stages.

A few paintings I've finished over the past year:

 I've been promising to post a few of the paintings I've done this past year, and here are a few for now:  

This is one I did for my granddaughter.  He's her horse, and his name is Val (short for Valentino because he came into her life on Valentine's Day).  He's about as goofy as he appears to be in the painting but really a very, very sweet horse.  Obviously, the original painting is not for sale.

This is a custom painting of a really beautiful dog named Ruby that I painted recently.    Her mom loved the painting, and I enjoyed painting her.

This is a painting of Cooper that I did for a very long-time customer.  He's an Australian labradoodle.  Again, it was a pleasure to paint him, and I'm so happy that his parents loved the painting.

And finally, this is another custom painting named --- I'm sorry!  I'm drawing a blank.  It'll come to me later.  She's obviously a golden retriever and she loves her little blue guy.  I really enjoyed painting her -- and her little blue toy, too.

This is all for now.  I'll add some more later on.  But now work calls again, so I better get back to it.

  

Still Working

It's been quite a difficult year for me, but I continue to work, at both my ceramic art and paintings. My daughter and her family live next door to my husband and me. Due to the coronavirus, we are unable to visit each other except outdoors and with masks. It has been a hardship, especially for us "seniors." We haven't left the house in over six months now, pretty tough. Fortunately, I am an artist, he a craftsperson/artist, and for some unexplicable reason, our artworks have been in great demand this past year, which kept us both really busy and able to keep the sadness/loneliness, etc. somewhat at bay as we see our family members go about their lives just next door without many restrictions. But I am getting a bit burned out on my ceramic artwork and have stopped taking wholesale orders from galleries -- except for one gallery who only wants my large one-of-a-kind sculptures. As I often do when I tire from one of my two areas of artwork, I am now doing less in the ceramic side of my business and spending more time painting again. Thus, I've begun taking commissions for custom paintings. Just drop me a message at my email address if you're interested. I've re-published my "How to Commission a Painting" page, so it can give you details on prices, etc. The number of paintings I will take is limited because, unfortunately, I am a meticulous, thus slow, painter and don't want to take on more than I'm comfortable with. I can let you know where you will stand in the calendar if you choose to commission a painting. In a few moments, I'll be publishing photos of a couple of cow paintings I recently finished, one of which is a "redo" of one I did a couple of years ago which I just wasn't completely happy with. Now I like it.

There's a Saying about Regretting what we didn't do . . .

Mark Twain:  “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails."

Okay, I really meant to chronicle every day of our road trip in real time -- and I managed to write one entry, about the end of our first day.  Well, we were sooooooo busy and were having soooooo much fun that I completely forgot to write each day.

Suffice it to say that our road trip was fun, entertaining, very educational, very memorable (in a good way), great bonding time, and very, very tiring.  I drove between 2500 and 3000 miles in 12 days (don't do that!) 

Over the next few days, I'll describe the trip just in case someone else is considering doing something similar and wants to learn from my experiences.

Between main destinations, we stayed in motels -- not fun but expedient.

Our first main destination:  We went to Arches National Park and saw all the requisite arches and hiked all the requisite trails and had a good time.  But it was way, way too hot, too sunny, and too crowded!  The first day, in fact, we had to wait in a car-line for nearly an hour just to enter the park.  Fortunately for us, all the campsites in the park were filled, so we found a beautiful site just beside the Colorado River on BLM land just adjacent to the park.  The sites were very large, mostly treed, with very clean pit toilets.  No water, though.  The campground ran through the Colorado River Canyon, just alongside the Colorado River.  We had beautiful red canyon walls hovering over us from both sides of the river.  One evening, we got to watch around 8 bighorn sheep somehow scampering on what appeared to be pretty much sheer cliffs.  It was quite a sight.

I have very few regrets from this trip.  Here's the main one:  We were tired and didn't visit Aspen,  Independence Pass, Twin Lakes, and St Elmo, all old favorites of mine.  I regret that very much -- but there are always other trips to be taken.

Something Different: My granddaughter's and my annual road trip!!

Just the two of us, we go on an adventure every year, and we're off already on our road trip to various parts of Utah and Colorado this year.  We're taking our time and wandering as we wish. 

We started Saturday morning in our home town of Ellensburg, WA, and drove to Ontario, OR, where we stayed the night.  On the way to Ontario, we took a side-trip into the little town of Baker City somewhere in Eastern Oregon.  It's a little town with a feel of what I would call a perfect "Small Town" of America, complete with some fun shops in a well-defined downtown, with a true "Main Street," of course, and a wonderful large center-of-town park, where there is a large playground for children, a bandstand for I presume great summer concerts for the whole town, and even a cute gazebo for whatever people do in gazebos -- get out of the rain?

Today, we drove only 50 miles to the city of Boise, where we went a bit out of the way to a great "World Center for Birds of Prey."  It is not only a serious research center but a center for the conservation and rehabilitation of birds of prey.  Further, it's the home of the Peregrine Falcon Fund, which protects, educates, and conserves peregrine falcons world-wide.  At the end of the over two-hours-stay, Elena has decided that she's going to become a scientist dedicated to these beautiful animals.  I would highly recommend that anyone with children around 8 and up swing by if you are passing through the area.  It's well worth the drive.

More tomorrow!