Into The Wind And Up To The Sky

Yesterday started out as another warm day along the Rio Grande as we left Lajitas to head north to Fort Davis. When we stopped in Study Butte for gas, it was getting warmer and still calm. The forecast had called for strong winds, but none were to be felt yet. I chatted with a rider from Austin who was gassing up his 1975 BMW R100S to head home. He thought the wind warning had been canceled. Boy, was he wrong...

Shortly after we left Study Butte, the crosswinds picked up but we weren't buffeted to badly. We stopped in Alpine, several hours north, to shop for groceries and the winds were quite strong and continuing to increase. By the time we reached the Davis Mountains, it was hard to walk into the wind and then the dust started coming. At Davis Mountains State Park, our destination, the sun was hazy from the dust. You could feel the grit on your teeth. It blew until about two in the morning, rocking the van, but not the kind of rocking that puts you to sleep. Our guide at the McDonald Observatory today, said it gusted to 88 mph over night.

Which brings us to today, which began cold and clear, 41º inside Speedy this morning and in the mid-30s outside. The sky was back to a clear blue. We hauled out the motorcycles and had a very nice ride to the McDonald Observatory about 13 miles away. The observatory has about a half-dozen telescopes including the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, a 433-inch optical telescope, one of the world's largest. It also has a single mirror 103" telescope and it's original telescope, an 82" telescope which was the world's second largest when it was constructed in 1939.

I wanted to at least see a large telescope and didn't really know much about the McDonald Observatory. We were fortunate to arrive at the start of their morning program. The first part was about the sun and included live viewing of the sun (via a video feed from a telescope just outside the visitor center). There were a few sunspots to be seen and some prominences shooting out from the sun as we watched.

It was then off to see the telescopes. We were able to go into the dome of 103" Harlan J. Smith telescope and see it up close and moving. Obviously, it wasn't being used during the daytime, so the dome was closed. They keep the air in the dome cool to match the night-time temperatures so it was quite chilly inside. We then visited the big telescope. It is made from an array of segmented mirrors and is not housed within a tube, like the 103" one. Since they want to keep the air as clean as possible, we could not actually go inside of the telescope dome, but there was an enclosed viewing area where we could see it. Trust me, 433" is big.

After the observatory, we rode back down that great twisty road back past the campground and into Fort Davis to visit the Fort Davis National Historic Site, a 19th century frontier US Cavalry post from the era of the Indian Wars and the home of the several companies of the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments, the African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" formed after the Civil War. A fair bit of the post has been restored and it was interesting to see how they lived back then.

A quick stop to refuel the bikes and pick up some fresh milk and it was back to Speedy in time to watch a group of javelinas sniff their way through our campsite.

Photos