My attempt at plein air painting

My dad loves to paint plein air. He takes out his traveling easel and oil paints, a small canvas, and goes to various spots in Sanibel, Captiva and Fort Myers and attempts to paint scenery OTHER than pastel palms and fluffy clouds. When I visited last month, I got to tag along (but I didn't get a cool easel, I was stuck watercoloring in a folding chair like one of those old men that occassionally sits on a midtown corner recording the times the buses show up at the bustops). Ahem.
Now, I am not much of a painter. I will repeat: I suck. I don't have the patience, and I can't really lay the colors down in a way that makes sense, and I don't handle a brush deftly at all. What I can do is draw and fill in the blanks with paint, like a paint by numbers. But I like the idea of painting. It can be calm and meditative or very passionate and consuming, so I'll give it a try every now and then.

This is what I came up with:

this is what I was facing:

My dad looked over my shoulder as I was painting, and said "Oh sweetie, that's great." And I said, "Daddy, turn around, I am painting the road behind us." He seemed relieved about that.