Coffee and tea and a drive up Skyline Drive to watch the sunrise. A little late for that so we decided we would eat, cinnamon bread with pumpkin butter, and go to the McDonald Observatory. I drove again. I am feeling more confident in my ability to keep the monster truck on the road. I don’t see Jerry jumping, hitting his breaks or bracing for the big one. I am going to try pulling the Casita on this trip.
A very nice woman who explained the costs and what the program entailed, greeted us. She told us that it would be cold in the observatory and we might want to put on a coat. Jerry asked about photography and carrying the tripod. She said it would be fine.
The person giving the program talked very fast and it was hard to follow what he was saying. We were catching most of what he was talking about. The slides were nice and he kept our attention. We are always pleased when a homeschooler is in the group. She was about 8 years old and was not afraid to ask questions. And they were good questions.
After the slide show we went to the Otto Sturve Telescope a 82-inch mirror. It was the second largest in the world in 1933-39 when build. It is still being used today. The astronomers ate, slept and worked in the observatory. They spent hours looking through the eye piece to make observations. They took trains into Alpine and drove to the observatory. Before interstate and paved roads. Forty miles might have taken them three to four hours and we can drive it in 30 minutes. That was hard work before the work began. It is located on Mt. Locke at 6,792 ft.
Today they have quarters set up for them and meals are made. The information gather by the telescope is view not through a computer, real time and analyzed. If you wish to gather information for an area in the sky, you send in the coordinates and information you wish to gather and they do the work for you, for a fee. A big change from the early days of astronomy.
Our next trip was to the Hobby-Eberly Telescope called the HET for short. It has a 433-inch mirror the fifth largest in the world. It is optimized for spectroscopy. It was dedicated in 1997. It located on Mt. Fowlkes at 6,659 ft. After absorbing all the knowledge we could we were hungry for food.
We ate at the deli that they had. It was okay. We looked for Christmas gifts at the shop. The woman working there told us about the javilinas she has around her house. She feeds them, has been for about two years. The male was the first to start hanging around and he would bring his lady and her kids for food. If food was not where he expected it to be he would bark like a dog. This year he had a pregnant female and she was gone for two days and showed up with two little ones for food. She said that she felt he trusted he because the other babies were much older when they came around.
Arriving back at Davis mountain we decided to walk the Quail Trail. It was not where we expected to find it and Jerry walked up the road looking. I was still getting my stuff together when a park ranger drove up. I flagged him down and asked him if he knew where the trail might be. Well, he was new to Davis Mountain, this was his second day, but he would try to help. He drove up the road, stopped and pointed. I gave him a thank you wave and we started our walk. We walked up and up stopped to rest and walked more.
At some point I looked down from this very narrow and rocky path and decided we needed to turn around. If any one of us lost our footing and slipped the only thing that might save us would be a large rock or a prickly pear cactus. That is something we did not need.
Back at the truck the park ranger stopped again and gave us a map. We introduced ourselves to Jason Corbin. He was so nice. Glad he is with the Park Service.
We decided to leave and go to Skyline Drive to spend the evening hoping for a great sunset. It was great. We walked around trying to out guess the sun. We watched as clouds began to roll in and knew we would get something. The colors are just amazing and we try so hard to capture what we feel in our hearts, but it is tough. No it is impossible. It just cannot be photographed. Oh well tomorrow is another day.
We decided to leave and go to Skyline Drive to spend the evening hoping for a great sunset. It was great. We walked around trying to out guess the sun. We watched as clouds began to roll in and knew we would get something. The colors are just amazing and we try so hard to capture what we feel in our hearts, but it is tough. No it is impossible. It just cannot be photographed. Oh well tomorrow is another day.
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