April 26-29, 2020 Shoshone, California

95 today and sunny. 102 predicted tomorrow.

Sunset last night and sunset tonight.  

Huge excitement in Shoshone today. My sister Judy got her old barely working swamp cooler removed and a new air conditioner installed. Ruud and Torian  were enthralled. 

I finished this masterpiece. It is 11 x 9 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches. It is made from natural and dyed pine needles. The center is a piece of glass I fused from old glass jewelry I made that did not sell. The beads are made of glass.  Grimshaw lake outside of Tecopa.  

It was close to 100 degrees here today. Inside the bus in the living room it was 104 degrees inside and 107 outside in the bay underneath. It was 110 degrees in the bedroom and 85 in the water bay. Tomorrow they are putting in a new 30 amp plug for us to plug into so we can run the AC.Woo hoo. This morning I got up early to go on a hike before it got too hot. I hiked from 8-9 and it was too late, it was way too hot and I got heat exhaustion and spent the rest of the day on the couch. Fortunately Robbie installed a 50 amp plug on the house next door and we plugged in and were air conditioned. The high outside was 104 degrees today.  With the bus in the sun all day, both AC units running it was able to keep the bus at 85 degrees. The temps are 15 degrees higher than normal right now, supposed to start cooling back to normal later in the week. The trail was lovely this am tho. 

The wildflowers are still hanging in, even with the heat.  Brittle bush, indigo bush flowers and the bush and pygmy poppies and yellow tack stems. Monkey flowers on the trail.  

Yellow brittle bush, red rocks and blue sky. Flowers along the trail. 

Flowers and cool mountain to the west. Looking east across the valley with wildflowers. 

Wildflowers and cool clouds. Mojave golden poppies, honey mesquite bloom and a field of poppies, yellow tack stem and woolly daisies.  

A tete-a-tete in the desert tortoise habitat. A raven nest in the old garage with at least one baby peeking out. 

April 25, 2020 Mojave Preserve, California

High in the 90's and sunny. We took a jeep trip into the Kingston Mountains and the Mojave Preserve.

We mostly visited Joshua tree forests. These are huge. The jeep is pictured with them to show you how big they are. There were lots of wildflowers. 

Joshua trees and wildflowers.  

We stopped at a truck stop on I-15 when we passed over the highway. Cima Mining company it was called. The most people in one place I have seen in a month and a half. Hedgehog cactus and bloom, filaree, antelope bush.  

 Fremont phacelia, tidy tip and a bunch of Fremont phacelia. Wooly daisies, bush alyssum, last years Joshua tree fruit and  golden desert trumpets. 

Wildflowers on the Teutonia peak trail with joshua trees. John and Judy on the Teutonia peak trail. This stand of Joshua trees is the densest concentration of Joshua trees in the world.  

Wooly daisies and Fremont phacelia close up and farther apart. Fremont phacelia and tidy tip daisies. Cool stacked rock in front of Teutonia peak. 

 Cool rocks along the Teutonia peak trail with huge Joshua trees.  Rock cress,  colorful group of flowers, phacelia and a cholla, a tidy tip daisy with fragrant cryptantha. 

Many of the rocks had a bent layer of block embedded in the larger rocks, fuzzy cholla and purple mat. Yuccas with blue flowers.  

wooly daisies and purple mat, desert dandelions and desert stars. Cholla with blue flowers and a carpet of yellow wooly daises around it.  

                                                                      

Desert marigold, mojave prickly pear , pencil cholla and mojave yellow poppy.   The desert had a carpet of tiny yellow wooly daisies.   

The desert had a carpet of tiny yellow wooly daisies.  Tiny yellow wooly daisy carpet and blue sage flowers. 

A bush with desert dandelions , orange desert dandelion and wooly daisies and desert dandelions. Desert marigolds, blue dick, and white desert trumpets.  

This Perry's nolina plant is about 12 feet tall with the blooms. Palmer's pentastamen. 

  Little white  desert trumpet flowers carpeting the desert floor here.  Cool clouds over the valley.  

Colorful flowers, claret cup cactus flowers and huge ball of cactus.  Sunset from Steaks and beer.

April 20-23, 2020 Shoshone, California

78 and sunny. Partly cloudy and even a mist of rain this afternoon.

Sunset last night.  I finished this masterpiece. It is 11 x 11 x 1 1/2 inches. Made of dyed pine needles. The center is a glass tile I fused of the sun rays coming though the mist and trees. There are seen beads round it, frog beads on the side and small golden hex beads extending the sun's rays. 

The frog beads on the latest basket. Beautiful sky this am when I was hiking the white trail.  

There were tons of these bright fuchsia monkey flowers in the washes. Loved this piece of wood.  Nice green view. 

 Sunset tonight with a palm tree.   Wire lettuce flowers, pink monkey flowers with yellow mohavea. monkey flowers with a yellow flowered plant and some white flowers on a small bush. 

A couple shots of sunset tonight. 

The newest masterpiece in progress. The center is a piece of glass I fused from jewelry that didn't sell. It was in the high 80's today and sunny. Thankfully a bit of wind to move the air around. No clouds except these few wisps at sunset. 

 I made chicken mole for dinner tonight. The sauce is garlic, lots of three kinds of chili powder,cinnamon, cloves, lots of cocoa powder, tomatoes and peanut butter. How can that not taste fabulous? It did. Progress on the masterpiece. I added a few more rows and some blue dotted dichroic beads, there will be three at each end. Also started the first row of the sides of the basket. It is now 9 1/2 x 8 inches.  

This white lined sphinx moth was hanging out under the light above me. It is about 1 1/2 inches long. It has a wingspan of up to 3 1/2 inches. When it flys it looks like a hummingbird with the fast wing beats. It's caterpillar is a striped lime green, black and yellow horn worm. 

It was way too hot today. 104 degrees inside the bus, with the fans blowing. We hung out outside where it was only 88 degrees. Judy P with her solar sombrero, Judy D and I working on baskets. John is reading in the hammock. He was so hot he ran through a sprinkler and was wearing a clothes. I had a spray bottle of water to spritz myself with. It is only going to get hotter here.

John cooked dinner outside on his partner camp stove. It was too hot inside. No clouds for sunset, but Venus was near setting. 

I added 6 more rows to the masterpiece today. It is now 11 x 9 1/2 x 2 inches. The plan is to only add one more row. We are sheltering in place in Shoshone, California. A cute little town of about 20 people in a isolated part of the desert. So I keep getting these ads on the computer. Current hourly rates of lawyers in Shoshone might surprise you, Cheap new senior apartments in Shoshone are turning heads, High interest savings accounts in Shoshone you might not know about. What a crack up, there are no lawyers,  apartments or banks in Shoshone. Tells me a lot about the ads I see on the computer. . .