March 19-20, 2015 Shoshone, California

We went down into Death Valley to hear Judy give a talk at the visitors center on Dangerous Women.

Judy on the stage telling us about Dangerous Women of Death Valley. John standing with the official temperature in Death Valley. This was around 1 pm, it got hotter in the afternoon.

We had Tim, Abby and Patrick over for dinner. Tim is a videographer who is in town to make a video of the wildflowers and the Armargosa river area. Patrick is the director of the Armargosa conservancy and Abby is his intern.  Judy is with them, and the next photo is John and Laurie, Judy’s husband with ribs.

Dublin gulch has these cave houses the miners built when they were living here. They dug caves back into the cliffs to live in because it was much cooler in there. The foreground was their dump-now historic artifacts. A prickly pear blooming.

 

Brittle bush and phacelia.

In the afternoon we went to the hot spring in Tecopa, then John and Laurie had lunch at the Death Valley Brewery in Tecopa.  In the evening we went to Death Valley Junction to the Amargosa Opera house. The opera house was made famous by Marta Becket. She leased the whole complex in the 1960’s, painted an audience on the walls and performed one woman ballets and operas.

In the lobby and some of the rooms of the motel she painted these 3 D looking murals. Marta is now 90 and does not perform. Jenna McClintock saw Marta dance when she was 6 and wanted to become a ballerina after watching Marta. She did become a well know ballerina. She stopped back by recently to thank Marta for inspiring her and ended up working with Marta to perform some of Marta’s old shows. Jenna says she now wants to stay here and keep Marta’s memory alive.

Marta opened and performed every weekend whether any one showed up or not. She then painted an audience on the walls. It took her 7 years to complete the whole thing. Here are some of the walls and part of the ceiling. Marta became famous here, she performed to a full house every time in her later years. We stayed here and came to the shows over the last 20 years.

Here I am awaiting my call onto the stage. . .  Jenna dancing. She is wearing Marta’s old costumes and  doing some of Marta’s early shows. She is very talented and it was great to come back to the opera house.

 

The motel after the show.