West Coast visit

We got back from our west coast trip a few days. Here are a couple of pictures of Crater Lake in Southern Oregon.

The first part of our trip was a couple of days in California's Napa valley buying some great wines (8 cases), and having a couple of wonderful meals at Bouchon, and Botega, etc. We were thrilled to find that you can now send wines to North Carolina. One case of Cake Bread chardonnay arrived the other day with the rest soon to follow. Before we bankrupted the family coffers with all the high end wine buying, we headed to Southern Oregon to our son and daughter-in-law's gorgeous vacation/future retirement home on the Rogue river for a fabulous family re-union.

We watched the salmon jumping, fished with the grand kids, enjoyed the company of old and new relatives, enjoyed great meals, and found time for a couple of visits to old haunts and restaurants in Ashland and Jacksonville, with  a half day trip to Crater lake Monday, after the re-union festivities.

Since we've been home I've been digging up potatoes, doing a bit of weeding (they took over while we were gone!); and  just getting settled in with our animals. I took a rest from the garden yesterday and got some studio time cleaning up, doing some glaze chemistry, and getting some of the Helios porcelain that was re-hydrating while we were away, on to the plaster wedging table to dry out.  I should be able to get the rest of it dried enough to wedge and store for throwing later this week. While it's drying I'll weighing out some test batches of the glazes I created yesterday.