On the Road with Anna and Noel: Tucson Gem Show

Our adventure has been in high gear this last week. Noel is going to the lapidary studio and has been cutting and polishing stones for me. Yea Noel! He seems to be really enjoying it, except his thumb nails may take a while to recover.

I have been taking a stained glass class here at the RV park, and my first project came out pretty good! I too have some cuts and burns to my hands - being crafty is hazardous!

Sunday we watched that pitiful game they called the Super Bowl, and then Tuesday we went to....wait for it.....The Tucson Gem Show! We left bright and early to make the 2 1/2 hour drive south to Tucson. The event, and its not just a gem show, its an EVENT, takes place annually and is the largest gem and jewelry show in the WORLD. It was everything Quartzsite wasn't. Every hotel, motel, convention center and meeting space houses amazing gems and jewelry from around the world. And its not just the hotel meeting rooms - its every room! In some they remove the beds, in others they just pushed it to the side, and so each room is like a little shop.

So while in Quartzsite I had to really search through a lot of rocks in their natural state, and stones cut and polished by dreadlocked, pot smoking prospectors to find ones I wanted, every stone offered in Tucson was of the highest quality, superbly cut and polished. Oh how I wished I hadn't spent so much in Quartzsite! I saw stones I had never seen before, there were mineral specimens from all over the globe, stones faceted with such precision they won awards! (like this guy: John Dyer) Table after table, room after room, tent after tent was just full of eye candy. I spent what money I had at our very first, and hence only, stop. It took less than an hour! But it was one AMAZING hour! Check it out....