Hanging Out At Lodi, Again...Part II

Living in a semi-rural part of the California Delta, you always have to be ready to travel a bit for your entertainment, fine dining and shopping. We are about 25 miles from anywhere so when I'm out art gallery hopping, sketchcrawling or looking for a bite to eat, I'm pretty much doing that while on the road.
This time I was visiting the town of Lodi, CA.

Lodi is in the upper part of the Central Valley, a city of farmlands, dairies, wineries (lots of wineries) and residential homes mostly located along Hwy 12 between Interstate Hwy 5 and Hwy 99. It's a nice drive with views of vineyards, strawberry patches, marshlands and Mt. Diablo in the distant south. I especially like hanging out in the older part of town with it's distinctive architecture on 100 year old buildings and historical areas. Did you know the first A&W Rootbeer was sold in Lodi? (Yup, neither did I but Huell Howser can't be wrong!) The picture below is by the train station and entrance to the old part of town.

Back in July I attended a pastel workshop in Lodi and enjoyed a preworkshop day of shopping and lunch at the Lodi Beer Co. on S. School Street: that's me in the mirror below taking the picture. We sat across from the enormous brew vats (beer made on the premises).

The burgers and onion rings were enormous!

Sketchcrawl 32 - July 23, 2011

Berkeley Horticultural Garden (Tilden Park)

Sketchcrawl Saturday found me in Berkeley with the East Bay Plein air Painters at a workshop (more about that later). Anyway, after the demonstration I had a chance to get around the garden and very quickly pencil in some impressions (ink and color added at home).

This sketch was of some interesting trees in the meadow area that had a very colorful orange litchen or moss growing on it.
The flowers below were found all over the garden entrance. The white ones are Matilija Poppies and they can get very large.

After the workshop I had dinner at Nation's Giant Hamburgers in El Cerrito.
I had a lot more time to sketch and ink in the burger place. The burger was tasty too!