March 12-13, 2020 Shoshone, California

We have  had the annual Family Death Valley trip planned to start about now. We have been doing this trip in March for about the last 20 years. We had 12 people coming and were going to stay at the fancy Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley.  Right about sunset each day at the Inn we all meet on the veranda, under palm trees in the lovely warm desert air and admire the sunset and have happy hour. Before dining in the fancy dining room at the Inn. We usually dress up nice for dinner.

This is a photo of happy hour on the lovely veranda at Furnace Creek Inn last year.

Due to virus fears 8 people canceled.  This morning my phone alerted me that Jill, my niece, was due to arrive today. She was the last one to cancel. She did not want to infect any of us geezers, the high risk group for the virus. So us 4 geezers decided to still have the trip. Of course we are not at Furnace Creek Inn, We are in Shoshone, but you can imagine it.  So tonight we had happy hour on our veranda in Shoshone dressed in our finery. Sunset that we admired tonight. Wild flowers we enjoyed today.

Happy hour tonight to kick off the annual family trip, with our homemade appetizers and drinks.  John, Judy, Judy and Suep dressed in our finery for dinner. 

Ever the gentleman John helped Judy with the appetizers. John braved the weather and shopped in Pahrump today to stock up. You could not get another piece of food into our fridge, it was full flat to the front. I also don't think we will run out of toilet paper. Of course this is how we stock up to be off the grid for a few weeks anyway.  

Progress on the current masterpiece. I worked on it to and from Pahrump and while John shopped. John got his business cards today. John Moran, Darwinian Interventionist ( Ret.), Licensed to forget: Federally and state certified, Free advice, gradtudious  Opinions. WARNING GEEZER on the front and the back says:Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: Charles Darwin

Phone:Yes Email: (see phone) Blog: http://pamperedpenguin.blogspot.com/ 

Just in case you haven't seen my card. The front side has a photo of the RV in a meadow of flowers and a rainbow. It says"Wherever we roam, We are always home, pamperedpenguin.blogspot.com. The back has a photo of a piece of stained glass that I made for my friend Katie's bathroom with Lightdance (the name of my business) and Sue Palmer on top of it. It also had my email address, but I took it off because this is the internet. It rained all afternoon and night yesterday even a little this am. Town was flooded. There was probably more water this morning, but I didn't make it down to check. What you see here is the entirety of downtown Shoshone on the west side of the road. There is a bit more across the street. Very nice, quiet, small town. 

I was going for a cool reflection of the Flower Building here. I believe the garden club raised the money for the building early in the towns history. The garden club members painted the flowers on the building. It has probably been repainted over the years, but I think it is still the same design as it originally was.  It is the auditorium, event center for town. The current masterpiece is coming along. It does not look much different from yesterday, but I spent hours on it today. I finished the last row with the black beads under it, got the bead sewed on and did stitching with more beads in the window around the black beads. Getting ready to start the next row which will be the chocolate brown needles like on the bottom of the basket stitched with orange cord and will have orange beads on the corners under the coil. That is the plan anyway.