I had a gallery show during the month of March in a local small venue. Had a

 good number of interested patrons come by. Certainly felt good to be received so well.

Been painting with "underglazes."

Combination of relief sculpture and layers of underglaze to enhance a bevey of quail scooting thru the grass.

I found some gold decals that dressed up a drab brown cup. I fired it to high temp to get a gloss, shiny finish, then applied the decals and put back into kiln and fired just enough to permanently fix the gold image. 

While we four were having our "girl's weekend". . .like a fun sleep-over. . .

Will drove out to California to meet up with Lia and her touring company to be "guardian" for her while Doug took a couple of days to meet up with some clients!  And he got to see her performance, and hang out with her and her new road family.

Her "curtain call."

AND 

One of the performances in Thousand Oaks, California was attended by a couple of not-so-young actresses who were in the ORIGINAL South Pacific on Broadway during its original run.  Barbara Luna.  When Rogers and Hammerstein were directly involved. Lia got to meet the original "Ngana" (her character) and take pictures!! I don't know if she realizes what a big deal that is!

8th Street reunion

Marlene Linn and Marla Muckala were neighbors of ours in the late 1970's and 80's when we lived on 8th Street in Oakdale in Minnesota. Our kids played together, went to school together and grew up together. They came to stay with us in Tucson for about 4 days and we had such a great time together.  Shared kid stories, bragged about our grandchildren, laughed a lot and managed to eat a whole lot.  Ellen Sepanan, the third part of the crew is Marlene's daughter's mother-in-law (got that!) She fit right into the Troup!

A conversation about life,

And it was Ellen's birthday. Cake and ice cream to celebrate!!

Uncle Jay , cousins and second cousins!

Cousins, Andrew and Doug meet up in Eugene Oregon for Lia's performance of South Pacific. So second cousins Mabel and Lia meet for first time!

Lia signing her autograph for Andrew after the show!

Saturday morning hike

Linda Vista trail above Tucson city.

Not a lot of color this year but a few wildflowers along the trail. They are there but you have to hunt for them.

Rocky, Rocky Point

You can see why Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point) got its name. We are hiking the Ricky coast near the RV park. Hi-rises on the beach and town beyond that. Once was a sleepy fishing village but now gringos started coming and tourist is biggest industry. Still best place to get shrimp and we have had our full of it!!

Big fishing trawlers and charter boats in the harbor. It has to be hurting while pandemic was big. In fact we were surprised to find it so busy when we arrived. And then we discovered it was Spring Break!! So extra busy and loud and boisterous everywhere--even noisy at RV park. And when did young ladies' bathing suits get so skimpy!?!?

We took a 5 hour boat trip out in Sea of Cortez to "Bird Island, " a protected island to see sea birds and sea lions and have a picnic lunch. Since it is a preserve we couldn't land but could enjoy it with binoculars and a could kayak in the shallow waters. We chose to just watch but a few people did kayak.

That dot is a Humpbacked Whale we saw on the way out.

And a school of Dolphins chased us.

The island

Seals playfully came out to great us!

There WAS a dolphin there. Just missed him, shutter not fast enough!

Lia and "South Pacific"

Granddaughter Lia is about half way through her nationwide tour with the touring company doing "South Pacific" and having a great time!  This week they will be in Oregon and then California and in Phoenix on April 1 and 2. We have our tickets and can't wait to see her.

  She is featured in an online publication called "Rising Talent Magazine, " all for publicity. They really made her sound like a star!!

www.risingtalentmagazine.com

.Also it has a Facebook page.

Arie and her ballet competition

She won first place in her age group and also was part of team first place.

The tide is out. It's not a sandy beach right here. It's an ancient lava flow actually, but now there are lots of tide pools to explore when tide is out. And lots of shore birds feasting on the goodies in the pools.

We went out to the  Penacate Preserve today north of town.  It's a very large area of desert and ancient volcanic craters, a World Heritage Site, A Mexican National Park, and Biological Reserve.  There is a series of roads through it leading visitors to volcanos and craters, sand dunes and peaks and desert sites but when we got to the East entrance we found it closed off and not open. We would have had to drive another hour or more to get to the North entrance. So we went to the visitor center instead (called Schuk Toak--not a clue what name means) but found it well worth our time. World class museum and exhibits explaining the Pinacate Reserve. Building itself is a wonder as it is the largest environmentaly self sustained building in Mexico, powered by solar and batteries alone. We spent quite a while there checking out the museum and the surrounding interpretive trails. 

Would have been fun to run around the dirt roads with our jeep, but this was fun too.

The desert here right here is not a particularly "pretty" landscape. Fairly barren with a few scrub bushes, very few cactus abound but I did discover a few Desert Ajo Lilys in bloom. One of those previous surprises of the desert that never fail to amaze. (Actually it is not a lily at all but in the Agave family of plants.) Native to the Sonoran desert and Mohave desert--first one I have ever seen.

 

Rocky Point for a week

We left Tucson for a week in the RV and headed south to Puerto Penasco, Senora, Mexico. (That's Ricky Point to all us gringos.)

  Left late in afternoon so we stopped Thursday night in a small, 12 site RV park near Why, Arizona. Small but quite nice camp run by some extremely helpful people! Up early and on into Mexico at Lukeville and we're at the beach by 10am.  Delayed a bit checking in at RV park here as something got lost in translation and they did not have our reservation. But they were not full so just had to pick us another spot. 

 Then off for the day getting aquatinted/remembering old favorite places. First was lunch of fish tacos, Mexican style shrimp coctail--perfect. That was great way to start our day.

Dinner overlooking city and the sunset. Our RV park is up the coast beyond those condos way on the background.