We moved.........last Tuesday

Yep, we moved last Tuesday.  We are near Bonnie Claire, NV  which is pretty much non-existent now.  We are parked on a dry lake bed on the road into Death Valley that goes past Scotty's Castle.  The rocks move here by themselves leaving a track. 

Someone stole the rock that made this track.

Pet rocks, maybe?

Wednesday was Roger's birthday.  He flew in the morning.

He was swooping around and hollering yahoo and having so much fun.  He also explored the area and was gone for a while.

I didn't have enough shortening to bake him a cake from scratch, so I made him a gingerbread cake that I had a mix for and then made lemon glaze from scratch to put on it.  It turned out good.

I am working on a dark green 3-D lizard with blue accents on the back that a friend had started and decided she didn't want to finish it and gave it to me.  I have finished the belly part with the legs and started on the back.  When I sew it together, I will stuff it with steel shot.

And this is my messy beading tray complete with a few finished projects as well as misc. items.

I will now put this project on hold to bead a 3-D hummingbird that I have an order for.  You can see other 3-D beaded lizards and hummingbirds that I have done at ontheroadcreations.etsy.com.  So, till next time have a blessed day.

Lila

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Way behind

I am way behind in my posts.  I had my next post almost done the other day, but somehow lost the whole thing and it was time to go get the mail.  I will try again to write about last Friday.

We went down to the hot spring for a soak and past Grimshaw Lake on the way. 

There is a little bit of water there.

But not much.  The mud is dried and cracked.

After we were done soaking, we decided to check out the little Bistro next door.  Not only were the prices out of the range of our willingness to pay, but the  selection was very limited.  We decided to head down the road about 5 miles to Shoshone and have lunch at the Crowbar.

The prices as well as the selection were more to our liking.  Here is my Sweetie ordering lunch for me.

It couldn't have been easy to bend that steel railroad rail for the foot rail around the bar.

We had BLTs with fries.  The museum was right next door.  We used to have Thanksgiving with friends at Tecopa.  Our group would get together and see if there was something in the area that we could volunteer to help with.  We used to clean, paint, and repair the museum every year till it changed hands.  The people in charge of it now don't need our help.

It used to be a gas station.

They also have a mastodon skeleton.

Across the road past the post office and little store there is a canyon between the mud hills called Dublin Gultch.

 

Miners dug caves in the side of the mud hills to live in.  Some even got fancy enough to have split-level rooms.

Charles Mansen used to live here with his followers.  If you don't know who he is, google him, he was a very evil person.

Here are a couple of the projects I made during Bead Week, which was the last week of March.  I wire-wrapped this turquoise donut.

And I made this tennis bracelet that sparkles like real diamonds. 

We just stayed around home Saturday, but we had a wonderful Easter Sunday.  We went to the little church in Tecopa.  The people here are wonderful.

Then we went to Pahrump just over the NV border to meet some friends for lunch.  They came all the way from Las Vegas about an hour away.  We heard about some other friend meeting for lunch in the area, so we checked it out and met them as well.  We had a nice little boomerang (gathering of boomers).

We visited for quite a while here at the Casino.  Then we went back to the RV park where some of them were staying and surprised another couple that were there, also boomers.  We visited for a while and made it home just after dark.  Yep, it was a good day.

Happy Easter everyone.

He is risen indeed.

Lila

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Didn't do much

Monday we went to Pahrump, NV to do laundry and pick up some groceries.  It is about 35 miles from where we are parked above Tecopa.  Tecopa has no store or laundromat, so Pahrump is the closest place to go.  Shoshone is closer (only a little over 5 miles away), but has no laundromat.  There is a small store there, but they don't have much and what they do have is really high priced.  I forgot my camera to take pictures along the way, which isn't all that surprising since I have been know to show up at grand children's birthday parties without my camera. 

Yesterday Roger went flying in his powered parachute and found a place where water erosion looked like a tree.  That is amazing.

Isn't that beautiful?  The wonders of God's creation.

I couldn't get the picture I wanted to load, so this picture of him taking off was near Quartzsite a couple years ago, but it shows what his powered parachute looks like.

The hills on the other side of the valley turn purple when the sun sets behind us.  I had never seen purple hills before we started coming here.  Purple mountain's majesty makes more sense to me now.

I found this online a while back.  I would never have imagined a mule could do such a thing, but this donkey killed a mountain lion.  The story is (as far as I remember) that a couple were out riding their mules with their dogs when they noticed a mountain lion stalking their dogs.  They stopped, but before the man could get his rifle to shoot the lion, it decided to attack and the burro took off and grabbed it.  Luckily the woman had a camera with her and she got off a few shots.  The mule grabbed the lion by the behind and banged it on the ground.

The cat was still alive here and trying to fight back.  Then the mule pinned the cat to the ground and bit the heck out of the cat several more times.

The cat was pretty much dead by now.  Then the mule picked up the dead cat and whipped it in the air again, then stomped on it again.

Notice the dog audience in the background.

We will be moving again in a few days, but if we do anything excited between now and then, I will post some new pictures.

Lila

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China Ranch

Saturday we decided to go to China Ranch and have a date shake for lunch.  Yummmmmmmmm!  It is not far from Tecopa. 

Looking down the road, it is hard to imagine that a date farm is near.

The road goes down pretty steeply between walls of dirt and rock with some neat windows.

There are some old (fenced in) gypsum mines along the way.

It is amazing that it can be so brown and barren up where the road starts and then so green and lush down at the bottom of the canyon.

It is a beautiful spot.  But now it is time for that date shake!

We bought our date shakes, some dates to eat and some date bread.  Yummy goodies for later as well. Here are a few more pictures around the ranch.

Kinda hard to read.

The big purple area is Death Valley National Park.  We are close to the SE corner of the park.  The Amargosa River runs through Tecopa and China Ranch and then turns north into Death Valley.  China Ranch also grows cacti for sale, which happened to be in bloom while we were there.

No matter where you go. there you are.   We went farther up Furnace Creek Road to what used to be an old mining camp with lots of buildings and several mines in the hillside.  Not much left but garbage and cement slabs.

Then we stopped at another place we like to camp on the other side of the valley from where we are parked now.  It is a beautiful spot with another wonderful view.

You don't see much as you turn off the road, but don't drive fast because there is a surprise waiting for you.

There is a slot canyon on the other side of China Wash.  We call it the little Grand Canyon.  Even though there isn't any water running down the wash, there is enough moisture for green plants to thrive. 

And last, but not least, what would a beautiful sunny (almost 90) day in the desert be without a beautiful sunset.

Beautiful, huh?  Oh, I almost forgot.  Those beads?  I finally put them together.  I made the clasp out of copper wire, as well as the ear wires for the earrings. It took me several starts and stops and take aparts to figure out the design I wanted. 

I even had enough beads left to make a matching bracelet with a magnetic clasp.

I had a pattern for a little beaded teapot.  It turned out really cute.  Beads are wonderful little things.

This morning we had our weekly "taters and eggs" breakfast and then went to the little church in Tecopa.  Sadly, I forgot my camera to take a picture of the church.  Today is in the 90s as well, but it is supposed to cool down a bit the next few days.  Have a blessed day.

Lila

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