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.