It's the Tucson time of year!

Another year has gone by and I'm back in Tucson having a blast looking at gems and stones, reconnecting with my supplier friends and buying lots of pretties for new designs! 

I left on January 31st at 6:30AM.  If you know me you know I am NOT a morning person, but, for Tucson, it's worth an early morning wake up so I'll have some time for shopping when I get there.  Mr. Cactus was dancing along for the ride again.

On this drive over I had sunshine, snow, rain and wind.  As I got to the Sunrise Highway turnoff I could see snow on the distant hills, but it was still sunny out.

As I got higher there was snow along the freeway and it was getting cold!  It got as low as 34F!  I was careful as I drove in case any of the bridges were icy, but the road crews were on top of things and had sanded any of the areas that might have been a problem.

And, because snow is a novelty I took lots of pictures as I drove along.  The summit was at 4140'.

And, as I headed back down, the snow on the hills got a bit thinner and it was all gone on the sides of the road.

I had to take a shot of the view behind me when I was at the rest stop just before El Centro.  I've never seen those hills white with snow before.

Hello and goodbye El Centro!

I do love to see the sand dunes along the way.  And I've never seen the desert this green.  Arizona was getting the same rain that we've been getting in San Diego, so there are lots of happy desert plants.

I hoped to get more pictures of the freeway art, but I passed a lot of it by before I could get my phone ready.  Here is a cool art piece along the frontage road in Tucson.

I was able to do some shopping at the JGM show.  Here is the Feng's Trading booth and some sweet, leaf carved strands. Yes I got some of the fancy jasper leaves.

There are a LOT of sellers with large stones.  These were some of the monster geode slices I saw.

I loved these beautiful sinks?

And thus ended day 1 in Tucson.