We went to the Desert Caballeros Western Museum today. The museum is currently showing their “Best of the West” exhibition, featuring the finest western collection of saddles and saddlebags, spurs and chaps, western memorabilia and plenty of western history. We actually saw a .45 caliber single action Colt Revolver that was used by Wyatt Earp.

The current exhibit isn’t the only show, however, since there are dioramas of the local history of Wickenburg, Arizona, including artifacts from the mining days and a mineral display. There were plenty of samples of exotic and rare crystals with a black light display of fluorescent minerals, all beautiful.

My favorite part, was the western art section where this colorful rendition of a Native American woman tending the flocks of goats and sheep. There were so many beautiful paintings and sculptures, many by very well known artists. Click on the image to enlarge.

If you happen to come to Wickenburg, don’t miss this great opportunity to take in the many beautiful art works and history of the region. You won’t regret it.

When you see the Arizona Flag, there’s really no need to wonder how the artistic inspiration for the Arizona Sunburst came to the designer . . .

We woke up to this beautiful sunburst in Ehrenberg, AZ, this morning. Click on the image to enlarge.

We visited the South Coast Botanic Gardens today to view the exhibits of the annual bonsai show and sale. This Foemina Juniper is one of the many interesting and creative exhibits. Click on the image to enlarge.

Today, we went to the South Bay Orchid Society’s show and sale at the South Coast Botanic Gardens. I took about 128 images of the beautiful orchids but I can’t show them all. It was very difficult to pick the 15 images for this slide show, so these were randomly picked.

I took this photo of Avalon Harbor from the hill, south of the bay, near the Wrigley Mansion. We were in a tram getting a tour of the town of Avalon when we saw this spectacular view. At the time I took the picture, I was using 35mm film in my old Canon SLR, so this had to be scanned into electronic format. Since it was sort of grainy, Bob went with the flow and applied a photo shop tool to make it look somewhat like an oil painting. Anyhow, this was the result. Click for a bigger version.

As an interesting aside, visitors on the Avalon tour don’t get to go up to this location these days. There is a problem on Pebbly Beach Road, just below this location, with rock slides. The Island Conservancy is concerned with liabilities associated with injuries to visitors, so neither the tour tram nor those little golf carts are allowed access to this area; this is a unique view of the town these days.

Diffraction and reflections aren’t all the optical tricks this seven-holer can do. Click for big.

This is the ‘Pontiac Chieftain’ hood ornament on the 1947 station wagon that we saw yesterday. It’s an Art Deco classic sculpture in it’s own right. Click the image above for the extra large view.

The Casino in Avalon, CA. on Catalina Island, is truly one of the world’s greatest Art Deco treasures. The mermaid over the box office (see a closer image here) has become an icon associated with Avalon - her image appears on event posters all over town and on the mainland in the terminals.

Cap’n Bob captured this vertical panorama of the mermaid while standing in the loggia at the entrance to the theater and ballroom. He combined three images to render this top-to-bottom view of the mural and box office. Click on her for the really big version - use the scroll bars to see the entire image.

More about the Casino’s murals from LAMurals.org:

Date
1929

Location
The Casino’s Avalon Theatre
1 Casino Way
Avalon

Media Notes
Designed by John Gabriel Beckman. Executed by Emil Kosa. Jr., Aloyous Bohnen, Vyseled Ulianoff, Alexander Kiss, Eugene de Goncz.

Description
Nine panels of underwater marine life including a mermaid encircle the loggia’s inside walls. They are painted directly on the concrete.

Around the dome, within the auditorium in an Art Deco style, are local flora and fauna, scenes of early California, and abstract designs. They were painted on a burlap-like material with extra-fine ground pigments in a flatene medium (used as a binder by printers). On a seashell carried by seahorses, Venus rises from the the waves. She is the central figure above the proscenium arch. Inside the arch are other figures as well as a map of Catalina.

More about the Casino’s description and history from Away.com:

Continue reading » The Catalina Casino - An Art Deco Treasure

After today’s session at the range, we set the guns out for cleaning as usual. I like to take a picture of the guns we took each time we shoot, just for the record. We don’t take all the guns on a given day. I handed my little Canon PowerShot A510 to Damsel while I was opening the tool box, and she took this nice perspective picture of the shotguns awaiting clean-up.

She just seems to have the artistic flair with the camera, while I’m just a mere photo journalist most of the time. I guess I can deal with that.

Just a few steps away from the orchid show we went to over the weekend, is the botanic gardens. One of our favorite sections is the cactus and succulent garden. You will find many strange and beautiful varieties such as this beautifully symmetrical member of the agavaceae family, which is closely related to yucca, aloe and agave. Click on the image below for the larger version.