The Fresno Gem and Mineral Society that I am a member of hosted a weekend retreat up at
Camp Sierra here in California.
I had never been to Camp Sierra before. If you are familiar with California it is located between Shaver Lake and Huntington Lake. There is a teeny-tiny sign pointing to a small road that leads to an even smaller one lane road that leads into camp. There are cabins tucked in among the trees...
There is no shortage of wildlife... Look deer! TWO OF THEM! Get my camera QUICK!!!
Let me get a close up.....
Ok, in my defense... I was NOT wearing my glasses. There was a few little roads/pathways that led to someplace spectacular I'm sure. Not even thinking I wore the wrong shoes.... Sperry's. Yep, boat shoes. Slippery, no tread, boat shoes.
I did manage to find a lot of beautiful flowers to take photos of without falling down....to much. *wink*
There are signs that say your not allowed to pick the vegetation.
Which is fine because I swear there was poison ivy very close to every.single.flower I saw.
The dandy-lions were almost the size of a tennis ball! I sooooooooooooo wanted to pick those and bring home the seeds and blow them all of my yard.
The weather was just perfect for a fabulous, relaxing time spent with delightful people.
Here was a pathway that led up to an outdoor chapel...
There had been a wedding the prior weekend. Sweet.
The last day of the retreat we had breakfast in the dining hall. It was an old and charming building and the food was cooked by a professional chef and boy could you tell! Yum.
During the weekend retreat we had several small classes of wire weaving. I liked the weave of this piece, but I didn't finish the piece until I came home so I could GLUE it. What can I say, I'm a
gluer. I glued the section of beads and then felt the piece was missing something, so I glued a metal flower at the top.
I also managed to snag some time working on the Lapidary grinders.
A.K.A. genies. I was lucky enough to be able to jump on a machine when someone was a "no-show" for a session. I didn't have any slabs to work with but found these sitting next to the trim saw-- I asked if I could have them, and of course the answer was "yes" because here they are! The two bottom ones I was told are amethyst.... oooooh-ahhh-lovely! They are not finished yet. I like to use the first three grinding wheels on the genie the best as they really knock away a lot of the stone and help you get them into a shape... the last six wheels do more of the "polishing" of the stones. These free form stones are needing a little more work done to them before I polish them... But it was FUN getting them to this point :-)
There was even a large saw that they had brought up and they sold and cut Geodes... I bought a few, here is one of them.
One evening, I learned how to play the game, "Mexican Train." Lets just say, I'm now addicted to the game. We stayed up super late playing and laughing, it was so-much-fun! What a great weekend, filled with great people... and lets not forget... great food. The work that went into making this weekend retreat happen was incredible. It seemed to be well organized and flawless. What a great experience, I can't wait for next years event!
big hugs,
Cheryl
