February 3-5, 2016 Death Valley, California

Almost 70, sunny and no wind. Lovely day to relax.

I am expeirmenting with the  best way to treat pine needles with glycerine. The best way is in the oven, John does not want me to do it in the coach oven, thinks it will catch on fire or something. So I am trying solar. It takes much much longer. Will see if it even works.  The sunset was rather linar tonight.

We recovered one more of the valances today.  The top one over the window is new, the one on the bottom still needs to be done. John cannot figure outhow to gert the bathroom one down to recover. The road past Badwater is still closed, so we took the long way around and came into the flowers from the south on the Harry Wade Road.

Huge fields of Desert Gold.  John outstanding in his field.

Sue dancing in the flowers. Looking toward Jubilee Pass, which is also closed due to flood damage in October.

Flowers as far as you can see. The upper photo of Ashford Mill is today, the lower one was two weeks ago. Not only did the sun come out the flowers multipied.

Berautiful clouds and hillsides.

Desert gold and the sand verbena together.

Wooly daisy, desert 5 spot, one I don’t know and lots of sand verbena. I gave up on the solar heating for the pine needles and got out the partner stove and boiled them for a few hours. Spent the day doing it, got 4 batches done.

Starting another basket with the glycerin preserved needles. A couple of cool vintage coaches are in the campground today. The top one is a 1950 Flexible. They were buses that people converted to motor homes. This particular one they found in some guys yard with a blowed up engine as the owner said , they put a new diesel engine and a 4 speed automatic transmission in. They fixed it up and have been living in it for the last 5 years. It is now for sale.  The lower coach is a Spectre by Apollo. Don’t know much about it, but they are both cool.

This evening we went up to Furnace Creek Inn and had a drink and appitizers at the bar.  Very fancy place, I am sure dinner was sold out. There is a marathon here tomorrow and the Las Vegas Astronomy is having a meeting here and are set up on the golf course to observe the skies. Death Valley is one of the few ‘dark’ rated parks where there is so little light the sky viewing is wonderful.