New Road Art

Note: I've been working on this post for about a week (yes, sometimes it takes me a while!). Today I got a phone call that NDOT had taken a loader and dump truck and removed the road art from along the road. An email thread on our local listserve indicated that according to Randy Hesterlee, Assistant District Engineer for NDOT, someone had called the NDOT office complaining about the road art being a safety issue. NDOT stated they have a right-of-way 100 feet from the center line in each direction and removed road art within that distance, except for things hanging on the fence, which they didn't think caused any danger. If any one wants to claim the road art as theirs, they can call John Ogden at 775-289-1700 to arrange a pickup.

Some new road art has been appearing on the road to Great Basin National Park. I was talking with another local about it, and he said he stopped when he saw one of these new pieces being installed. A sixth grader, who's being homeschooled in North Snake Valley, made these creations. They represent images in our dark night skies. The one above is the Dolphin, leaping from the waves.

She did a great job welding lots of details onto the dolphin. The wind blew it over, so we tried to stick it back upright so more people can enjoy it.

This one was put up earlier in the summer and is the winged pegasus. I heard that it was put up in celebration of the Dark Sky Certification of Great Basin National Park.

Again, the details are marvelous. Here are the feet.

And a close up of the head.

Desert Girl really wanted to go for a ride!

The Big Dipper (I think--could also be the Little Dipper) is new near the Baker Ranching Exhibit (which has some marvelous metalwork done by Bill and Kathy Rountree).

Each of the stars has a spigot.


Nearby is this constellation. Do you know it?

If you need a clue, the name is written on it.

The queen not only has her crown, but also her "W" shape. And the mirror lets anyone who wishes to be queen see herself. It's a great design!

We stopped and took a closer look at "Hang Out," which has been up for awhile, but we hadn't made the time to really look at it.

Again, the detail was fabulous. So much thought went into each part!

There are decorations hanging out too.

Last year this concrete buck appeared under the juniper tree. It looked really cool, and I wondered how long it would take some idiot to think it really was a deer and shoot it. Well, it took a few months, but eventually someone did blast it. (Doesn't give you much hope if someone can't tell a concrete buck from a real one; plus shooting from the road is illegal.)

We found the face on the ground, and Desert Girl held it up for a photo.

This is another constellation, but you might have to go by the British name to identify it. They call the Big Dipper the Plow.

Here's the Flower Bed. Or maybe the Bed of Roses? Part of the fun of Road Art is trying to figure out what they are. Most have puns as part of their art.

This is a true masterpiece: "Wheeler Peak." The "peak" is make of bicycle wheels. But there's more.

The faces that adorn the sides are made from old bike seats with interesting adornments. They kind of look like aliens. Which is fitting, since the Internet says that a UFO crashed on a nearby dry lakebed, and that the ETs took refuge in the area. (Seriously, this does exist on the Internet. See more here.)

Then check out this huge dreamcatcher, called "Baker Mix." it is made with all sorts of baking utensils, like whisks and slatted spoons and measuring cups and cookie cutters. It is amazing.

A few paintings also dot the fenceline, some calling attention to the beautiful night skies over Snake Valley.

I would usually say go take a look at this marvelous art, but most of it is now gone. You can see some more road art in these posts: 2015, Our Little Solar System, Solar System Restored, 2012, Rollin Springs, 2009, Introduction to Road Art.

New Road Art

 The Road Art contest is underway, so we decided we would contribute something. Desert Girl painted most of these with a little help from me.

A couple miles away is this road art:

At first it's just eye-catching with it's large size. It's worth a stop to look at it more closely because this isn't just road art, it is true art, with amazing detail. Here are the five faces:

We noticed another piece of road art along the way:

Hopefully there will be a few more entries this week. It's always neat to see the creativity!

Our Little Solar System

I'm a big fan of road art, and I had an idea in the early summer of a fun road art project. But it was hard to get the time, energy, and materials needed to implement it. I gave myself a deadline: it needed to be up before the Great Basin National Park Astronomy Festival on September 5-7. And fortunately it's up! Here's the newest road art on the park road.

The solar system has arrived! We begin with the sun (which later blew over so is now oriented slightly differently.)


Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. My helpers were enthusiastic for the inner planets.


Venus, our nearby neighbor. Wow, it looks small!

Go, Earth!

Oops, Mars is a little blurry. Must be a telescope error.

Intermission to drill holes in the boards!

What's after Mars? Well, we did put up Jupiter, but then we came back and put up five dwarf planets, including Ceres, which is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.



Then comes Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system!

Saturn, Desert Girl's favorite planet. Our Saturn keeps losing its ring, though.

It's a long way to the next planet, Uranus (which should be bluish, but I had lost energy by this time, so if anyone wants to paint it blue, go for it!).

And what's the last planet in our solar system?

Neptune! (which should also be bluish)

But wait, what about Pluto? Most of us were taught that we have nine planets in our solar system. Those days are gone. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union came up with a definition of planets, and Pluto just didn't meet it. So now it's a dwarf planet.

 

Little Pluto, a cold rocky planet far, far away.

The good thing about Pluto becoming a dwarf planet is that we also got a few more dwarf planets, with more probably to be discovered.

Meet dwarf planet Haumea (which is slightly oversized in the model, but we had run out of little, tiny balls).

And here's Makemake (which we have a lot of fun pronouncing).


Finally there's Eris, the largest of the dwarf planets. (And maybe the hardest to find in our little solar system, since we had to switch to a different fence.)

To space these planets, I found Dr. Jerry Galloway's website that had both a 100 foot backyard model and also a four-mile model. I made adjustments to make it about two miles long. It was a nine-planet based system, so then I looked for information about the dwarf planets and fitted them in. They might not be exact, but neither are their orbits. Several of the planets and dwarf planets change order depending on where they are in their orbit (for example, Neptune and Pluto).

Here are the distances if you're interested, along with diameter sizes scaled for a four-mile long course (I chose to make my planet diameters not to scale, as I wanted them to be visible while driving 60 mph along the road, but wanted to give you an idea in case you want to make your own solar system model):

Astronomical body	distance	diameter (inches)
Sun	0	60
Mercury	105 feet	0.2
Venus	185 feet	0.5
Earth	271 feet	0.6
Mars	413 feet	0.3
Ceres*	~600 feet	<.1
Jupiter	¼ mile	6.2
Saturn	½ mile	5.2
Uranus	1 mile	2.2
Neptune	1 ½ mile	2.2
Pluto*	2 mile	0.1
Haumea*	2.1 mile	<.1
Makemake*	2.2 mile	<.1
Eris*	2.5 mile	0.1
*dwarf planet

Running or biking on the park road will now have some new landmarks--can you make it to Jupiter in ten minutes? How about Uranus?

I consider the road art as community art, so anyone who would like to improve on the art (for example, making better planets or a ring that will stay on Saturn) or add to it (e.g., asteroid belt, other celestial objects) is welcome!

More Road Art

I'm a big fan of road art, and I saw this the other day.

It's an interesting use of a George Foreman grill!

Much of the road art is a play on words, like Barb Wire.

And so Barb isn't out there all alone, Bob Wire is nearby.

If you want to see more road art posts, click here.

More Road Art

Not far away is some interesting road art, and you can read an introduction about it here. While I was driving the other day, I noticed that this mannequin, who had recently been sporting men's clothing, was now dressed in a new style. We've had a little cold snap, so it might be getting a little chilly for her at night.

An alien sits by the side of the road, watching the traffic go by every day. The air is a little thin, hence the breathing apparatus (at least that's what I'm calling it). Even handicapped aliens manage to have a good time. I think the alien at one time was skiing, so perhaps it was a ski accident that has him sidelined.

The helmet can help protect him from the abundant cosmic rays. 

Some of the road art stays up for a long time, while other is quite temporary, so I realize I need to do a better job of photographing it. And what better place to put those pictures than on this blog?