January 25-31, 2016 Shoshone, California

 

Sunset last night with rushes in the fore ground. This chair is made from a suit case. We saw it at Tecopa Hot Springs Resort gallery.

Shoshone artist in residence David Ohlerking painting in downtown Shoshone.  He painted Tecopa and Death Valley Junction and now is doing Shoshone.  In a little painting project of my own I finished the porch!!

Meanwhile I am staying off my knee in my lawn chair working on my basktet. I have local medicinal mud on my knee, it is supposed to help reduce the swelling.

The basket so far.  Sunset light in Tecopa.

Sunset in Tecopa. The basket in kind of sick inside light.

John is training for a 2 week, 170 mile backpack. The B2B, or Beatty to Badwater. It follows the course of the Amargosa river into Death Valley. My knee is hosed, so I will drive some support.  Another fabulous sunset tonight.

Progress on the basket. The sunsets continue to be spectacular.

Sunset over the historic garage.  Saturday we came back down to Death Valley. There are even more flowers. It is supposed to rain Sun and Mon, so when the sun comes back out we will check out the flowers in the southern valley where we viewed them before.

On Saturday night we attended the Metabolic Studio’s IOU theatre performance of Death nValley Scotty. We saw them when they performed War of the Worlds in December in Lone Pine. This show was from the script by Ruth Woodman  written for the Death Valley Days radio show. This one aired in 1955. It was a fabulous show. The original may not have had the clever sound effects and the visuals of these guys were hilarious. These guys are really good.  John is pointing too the hole I fell in. It is now covered with diamond plate and they grated around it so it sticks up more, easier to see- at least during the day.

It amazes me how these flowers can grow in the most desolete, inhospitable places that have not even gotten rain since Oct. But there they are. They are in luck though, it has been raining all day.  Big storm, I guess it is snowing in the Sierra’s too.

The sun came out for a short while, there were cool wispy clouds. Around sunset the clouds opened up long enough for a nice sunset.  It is now raining again. Supposed to all night.

These are happy flowers.  They said earlier this week that if it rains a little more there will be a super bloom this spring. Well it is raining.

January 21-24, 2016 Shoshone, California

We drove back to Shoshone from Death Valley to visit my sister, soak in the hot springs and get a massage.

We had lunch with Ila and George. I got George to smile, but not open his eyes. This is a photo of a miners shack in Shoshone with the almost full moon rising behind it tonight.

I wanted to get the full moon with the sunset light on the mountains, but the sun went behind a cloud, I will try again tomorrow. Sunset flamed at the last minute tonight.

Tonight I caught the moon behind a palm tree- in the lower left part of it, and sunset was nice.

Starting another basket, this one will be shorter and fatter than the last one. Since I can’t hike with my swollen knee I decided to make myself useful and paint Judy’s porch bright tourquiose.  John of course went on a lovely hike.

This afternoon we went to the opening at the Tecopa Hot Springs Gallery of  David Ohlerking’s paintings of Tecopa. He is the Artist in Residence in Shoshone and living in the artist residence practically next door to us.  He makes his living painting small towns. His work is fabulous.  He portrays Tecopa in such a colorful way.  You can kind of see his work in the gallery photo. He will paint Shoshone next. We had our photo taken with him. Judy, Mark Hamil who is wonderful local artist, David and Sue.

After the opening we attended the last show the Gypsy Time Travelers are giving in Tecopa this time through. They live in a fabulous RV castle that they built. They go around the country giving shows. Christy tells wonderful stories and Michael makes trinkets in the blacksmith shop built into the castle right  behind her, it is hard to know which one to watch they are both so entertaining.

Sunset put on a show tonight before we soaked in the hot springs and had dinner at the Bistro.

After dinner we listened to Pablo Tecopa and the Dusty Butter band performing on the stage. We arrived just as Nancy was singing a song about vampires with the full moon shining above them.  Meanwhile I am still painting the porch.

The porches purpose is to hold solar panels. So it is kind of like painting the picket fence, lots of little nooks and crannies.  So this blog has gotten boring while I am gimped out. John went on another nice hike today. I will have to suck some photos out of his camera, when he gets the new battery he ordered.

I am also working on the basket more. I will bring the top in a few more coils making the opening narrower then decorate it kind of like the last couple. I am running out of the glycerine treated needles I started this with so I am mixing in lighter untreated needles. Hopefully I will have enough to finish it, or it will be decorated with ligher needles, that might look good too.

January 17-20, 2016 Death Valley, California

Still icing my knee in the lawn chair. Boo.

And making progress on the basket.

Sunset last night was nice. If you can’t read my shirt in this photo is says I do all my own stunts!

Good news, I can now ride my bike. I am not entirely crippled. We watched sunset with the neighbors tonight. Brent is the retired fire chief from Mammoth, Scooter in his own chair and John.

Sunset was spectacular.

More good news they roped off the hole I fell in. All of Johns work writing an incident report and calling all over did some good. Today I did a nice bike ride. 76 degrees, I am in heaven. The knee is getting better a little bit everyday.

I rode down to Harmony Borax works again. Here are flowers by the ruins. Also I rode to the end of Mustard Canyon, love the yellow rock.

Mustard Canyon. I also rode down to the reservation of Timbisha Shoshone. Death Valley is their homeland and Timbisha is what they called Death Valley. I had an Indian Taco, yum, yum, for lunch.

The basket is now done, the shellac is drying. Here are the beads I decided on.

Saw this cool rig in the campground. A Land Rover Camper. It is from Europe.  Sunset tonight was fabulous again.