Here's a collection of photos from the past week, mostly
from the Fort Davis area.
This is the reconstructed historic Fort Davis with Sleeping Lion Mountain behind it. The fort dates from the early days of the
Gold Rush when emigrants needed protection from the Indians. After the Gold Rush was over there were
Indian problems, mainly Apaches, and then the Mexican Revolution which spilled
over the border. The fort was closed
down in 1891 but the town managed to hang on.
It now has a population of about 1200.
It isn't incorporated but it's still the county seat because
it's the only town in the county.
There's one small grocery and one gas station and very little else. No traffic lights or Walmarts for 100
miles. Alpine, 25 miles south, is bigger
because it's the home of Sul Ross University but it has 4-way red lights so I
guess that doesn't count as true traffic lights.
;-)
Our campground in Fort Davis in the snow.
We liked the campground in Fort Davis......small, quiet,
good view, easy in and out, excellent wifi.
Everything good except the laundry.
It had two washers and dryers and one of each was broken. As a result, after getting to our next stop in Carlsbad we
spent all afternoon doing laundry.
Here's the Chihuahuan Desert
Nature Center and Research Institute which has a large collection of native
plants and a greenhouse with over 150 species of cactus. This isn't a good time of year to visit since
nothing is in bloom but it was still worth doing. The most interesting part was a geology
exhibit on top of a hill where there was a 360 degree view of the surrounding
mountains with information boards explaining the geology of the view. It was fascinating and exactly what I wanted
to know, but a strong cold front was coming
through right when we were hiking up the hill.
It was all we could do to stand up so we read all the information and rapidly retreated. The wind was probably 40 mph
with 50 mph gusts at that point. It was
so noisy in the RV we brought the door-side slide in as it was the one taking
the brunt of the wind.
Yesterday we went to the McDonald Observatory which is 16 miles northwest of Fort Davis. It was sited there because the area has the darkest skies in the country. At least they did until Odessa/Midland got so big there are light pollution problems The observatory is working with the cities to try to reduce the light pollution so it doesn't mess up the astronomical research.
Hobby-Eberle 433" telescope
The biggest telescope is the Hobby-Eberle which was the third biggest in
the world when it was built. (It is now
the 5th biggest.) There's a glassed- in viewing area where you can see the edge
of the mirror and the frame it sits on.
It's difficult to tell what you're looking at, but this is part of the inner workings of the Hobby-Eberle telescope. The mirror is 433" across and is made up
of 91 sections which weigh 250 lbs each (total mirror weight 27,000 lbs.) The mirror sections are supported on the framework which can be seen in the picture.
The telescope isn't tube-shaped at all; it rotates on air like a hovercraft.
We toured the 107" telescope......got to see it move around and the dome rotate.
We did a daytime tour of the observatory, then went back for
the twilight program and star party which included looking through a vast array
of telescopes up to 22”. I had been looking forward to this immensely,
thinking it was going to be really great to see through these big telescopes,
but it turned out that it wasn’t as great as we expected. We’re so used
to seeing magnificent photos of nebulas and other celestial objects….the big
color- glossy type pictures…..that in person what we saw was just a glob of
stars.
One scope was trained on the Pleiades which we’re used to barely being
able to see. All we could see through the telescope was a clearer mass of
stars which, to our untrained eyes, meant nothing. The one thing which
was really cool was seeing Jupiter which was magnified enough we could see its
rings and its four main moons. That was worth the whole thing.
Besides that we were frozen. Worth doing but not quite what we
expected. I’ve concluded it’s better to be an armchair internet astronomy
fan since there are a lot of great online astronomy sites. Touring the
telescopes was definitely worth it, though.
These are the mountains between
Fort Davis and Alpine during the snow on Thursday. We drove over to Alpine to see the museum at Sul Ross University. Very interesting museum and the mountain views there and back were beautiful. We didn't expect to find snow in Texas but, with the altitude in Fort Davis being over 5,000 feet, we shouldn't have been surprised.
Fort Davis at sunrise.
Wild Rose Pass
We
left Fort Davis over Wild Rose Pass which is the way the original settlers
entered that area.
After we got past the mountains, shortly before
hitting I-10, the land turned very flat. There are oil wells and tanks at
regular intervals, lots of tanker trucks and trucks hauling equipment.
Pecos, TX, is a dirty, ugly little town. The whole area is devoted to the
oil industry. There’s so much land people don’t bother trying to properly
dispose of worn out equipment. Masses of old equipment and
vehicles are being left to rust and rot into the ground, apparently abandoned wherever
they broke down. It’s an extremely unattractive part of the
country.
The land gets a little hillier at the NM line, but it’s still
really barren. Carlsbad is the biggest town we’ve seen since San Angelo,
TX, before we got to Big Bend.
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