Thunderbird Hotel Marfa

We went to the McDonald Obseratory, it was near Fort Davis, Texas. It is on top of a big mountain. We left at 11:30am and got there at 1:45 pm. The tour started at 2pm and ended at 4:30pm. We toured two big telescopes and watched how they moved. The biggest telescope is the 3rd largest in the world. We ate dinner in Fort Davis - a BBQ again ...

We went to Fort Davis, established in 1854. It is one of the nations best preseved frontier forts. We stopped at a snake place to see snakes. Mamaw did not come in. We went shopping. After that, we went to Marfia again and we saw more lights this time. The nights are darker here so I can see a lot more stars then back in Zanesville. I even saw the Milky Way!

... band covers and other projects that are totally up my alley. We hit it off right away, and he ended up hosting an after-party at his house. It was fun to talk music with the band and a couple of total music geeks who lived there. Walking back to the hotel from the party, the night sky was completely dark; no light pollution to be seen in any direction. The Milky Way was a bright stripe, and I saw a few planets. The desert air was warm, but breezy. Beautiful.

It was a long haul across Texas, but I finally got to Big Bend National Park. West Texas is desert country much like Arizona and New Mexico. In fact, it is part of the Great Chihuahua Desert which extends well South into Mexico. The park is in the Southwest spur of Texas, along the Rio Grande River. This park is really out of the way with the closest big city (El Paso, TX) being over 200 miles away. In addition to being ...

... Village Greenhouses - A 16 acre complex completely under glass that grows nothing but tomatoes in hydroponic conditions. Unlike our tomatoes, these grow in clusters like grapes. Davis Mountains - The formations are very unusual and look like somebody stacked huge rocks side by side or one on top of the other. It makes one wonder how they don't come tumbling down. The loop drive along Hwy 166 contains various biomes and very nice scenery. We saw javelina (small sport hunting ...

... at home one day! The only down-side to an otherwise wonderful hotel was its proximity to the railway line and the fact that the Union-Pacific trains that came through at several junctures in the night seemed to have a policy of tooting their horns very loudly all the way through the town, presumably to warn people not to suddenly decide to lie down on the tracks. But it was a small price to pay for an otherwise perfect stay - and the hotel did offer courtesy ear ...

... For those of us who are not engineers, it is a marvel of mirrors, motors, degrees, computers, air foils and elevators all put together just to let one Astronomer at a time, take pictures of the heavens as they were a very long time ago (light years or something like that...see we can learn a little bit....very little). The pictures on the other hand are beautiful and make one feel very close to those things ...

The next day looked around Ft. Davis a bit, then we drove to Marfa. Both towns are very small West Texas towns. Neither has a movie theater -- you have to drive 90 miles to Alpine (it has one screen). But both have charming county courthouses which like many in Texas, date from just after the turn of the (20th) century. We visited the Chinati Foundation, which was our purported reason for the whole trip, but liked the buildings better than the art, so didn't stay that long.

... to the baby deer scented suntan lotion she slathered on me before we began our ascent. We saw a few whitetail deer and some Mexican Jays as well as a multitude of cacti, agaves, sotol and junipers. After lunch, we headed to the Rio Grande which is not so Grande right now due to the season and the current drought (see photo). The highlight of the day was a short hike to some hot springs (105ú ) that abut the Rio Grande (see photo ...