Seahorse in the Desert

The camera focus is on a decorative stern-piece of one of my Lake Las Vegas boats. A sister-ship can be seen out of focus in the background with painted desert mountains in the distance.

These gondolas were originally designed and built by Tom Harper on Vancouver Island, where they ran for several years in Victoria's Inner Harbour. Tom was in the fish farming business long before he decided to build gondolas.
I had the opportunity to visit Tom a couple times at his fish farm in Nanaimo a few years ago - it's an amazing place in a spectacular setting. I didn't see any seahorses at the fish farm, but decorative ones appear in many places, both on the gondolas he built and in promotional material for the business which ran in Victoria. Tom sold the gondola business to someome else, and after a few others had either owned or managed it, the gondolas ended up in other places. Today they are all part of my operations in Texas and Nevada.

The five Tom Harper gondolas have been through some precarious adventures before arriving in their current homes. Two of the decorative seahorse stern-pieces still exist - both are in Lake Las Vegas. Like many of the metal appointments on these boats, the seahorses were made from aluminum castings. I had the castings on this gondola painted in an unusual burnt-orange, the other was done in the original muted gold (some car makers refer to it as "champagne" colored).
The muted gold seahorse can be seen in a few previous posts, including January 7th's post A Seahorse in Reflection.
Searching "Lake Las Vegas" here on the blog will yield many more posts to look at.