I left Birmingham on Friday May 27th and drove to Abliene TX. Getting up on Saturday I headed out of Abliene before 7am and first drove into Odessa stopping at the meteor crater. I did the walking trail around the craters and it was nice little walk explaining some of the geology of craters. Best of all the museum and walking trails are free. There is a small exhibit and gift shop. I bought a small meteorite fragment that was found at the site during the episode of Meteorite Men at the site.
From Odessa I drove onward to Fort Davis, stopping by McDonald Observatory. I took the opportunity to approach observatory from the west as one would if approaching from western Texas or New Mexico. The drive gets progressively more hilly and narrow as you get closer to the Observatory. I took the opportunity to approach from this direction to take in the geology of the area. The area of West Texas has some awesome geology and I was lucky to have the book Roadside Geology of Texas with
me.
After leaving the observatory I headed on down to Alpine TX and stayed the night there. There is a neat little bookstore in Alpine that I took the chance to take in. Sunday morning found me leaving Alpine and heading for Big Bend NP. I entered the park via TX118 and did the geology drive and took in the Santa Elana Canyon loop. I took a couple
of smile hikes to a couple locations, which I have included a picture of (Tuff Canyon).
However the best part of the drive is the arrival to Santa Elana Canyon.
I think the picture speaks words of the beauty of the location.
It was over 100 down by the river. Leaving the canyon I headed to the Chisos Basin and took in the beautiful Alpine mountain lodge. It is amazing to see the beautiful trees and be several thousand feet higher and quite a few degrees cooler. There is a lodge at the basin that serves food, the quality is okay, and the price was a little high I thought. After leaving the basin I went to Park Headquarters at Panther Junction. This is a nice station that I took the opportunity to speak to a nice ranger and there is also a small gift shop. After leaving the station I headed out of the park on TX385 and stopped at the fossil
exhibit. I was a little disappointed with this exhibit; there is a glass case of replica bones and a display that explains the layering of the soils and dirt layers. By this time it was well over 100 degrees again
because of the elevation change and so I didn't spend much time of the exhibit, but I didn't think it lived up to the hype.
One last thing about Big Bend, the earlier in the year you can visit the better, in summer certain portions of the park are not open. Park entry is 20.00 per car and it is good for 7 days.
Once leaving the park I zipped up to Marathon TX then turned west into Alpine TX, lastly making the northward jog into Fort Davis. I arrived at the Prude Ranch a little after four in the afternoon.
I got my stuff stashed at Crows Nest Bunkhouse which is near the middle field, also found out I was bunking with a guy I had met in 2009 Len Philpot.
So what about the observing for the week.... well.... The first night was great, I was able to complete one of John Wagoner's lists and earn the pin "Lions Tigers and Bears Oh My!"
At the time I was trying to do the other program he had for the year "About Face" but I was finding the scope was slewing back and forth the sky too much, coupled with the objects for "About Face" were getting lower and lower I decided to tackle them on Monday night. Unfortunately for me Sunday was the only completely cloudless night we got, every
other night started off cloudy and cleared later in the evening if at all. Monday was good after midnight. Tuesday we had a storm. Wednesday cleared after the clouds left only to be smoked by a wildfire that the
storm had started the previous night. As for the rest of the week... well they were a write off too. Saturday evening looked promising at one point, but with an early evening storm it rained (first time since Sept
2010) and even had a little mixed hail in it. However I did get to see the dwarf galaxy Barnard's Galaxy with Mike and Dave in a 17in scope on Monday morning. It was a round glow that is quite large. We even found it in some very large binoculars that Mike had.
I took in a few speakers for the week. I found the two most interesting to be Jimi's on the Sweet Pea object he discovered on a SLOAN survey. He then proceeded to observe the object with his 48in telescope and Larry Mitchell's talk about really faint objects that are near the Messier objects. The main speakers on Friday and Saturday were really not as
good as the ones from 2009. I actually walked out of Saturday's speaker because of the dryness of content and the speaker. The speaker was supposed to talk about the galaxy zoo application and citizen science, but instead talked about the science galaxies and frankly talked over the heads of most the audience.
Overall though it was a good trip and I enjoyed myself and was able to
un-stress from life and work.
(this is an observatory that is located on the Prude Ranch, a short hike from the upper observing field, built by Alabama astronomer Ed Boutwell in 1983)
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