McDonald Observatory

We drive to the McDonald Observatory, part of the University of Texas at Austin program. Joe and I would always listen to their 5 minute radio program on the public radio station years ago when I drove him to kindergarten, "Stargazer". Each morning they would tell you what to look at the sky that night plus give some info on the stars or planets.

We look at the exhibits (kindof boring I thought) and then attend their Solar Show with a guy named Shannon, who was an excellent speaker and was our tour guide later for touring their 107" telescope facility. The show about the sun was very good, but a lot of info in 35 minutes. After the show we hop on the shuttle (since we have the RV we can't drive to the telescope facility at the top of the hill) and take a one-hour tour of their 107" telescope facility. Again, Shannon is a very good speaker and it actually was very interesting.

Then back in the truck for some more driving through west Texas desert. By this time, I'm getting tired of the desert, with no cell coverage so no internet on the road. I'm so thankful for our XM radio! We go back and forth between the news channels and the music.

We call Guadalupe National Park campground to see if they think they'll have a site for tonight and find out that they only have one sight left and we're still an hour away in Van Horn, TX. So we pull into a KOA, which was a great decision. They have mini-golf for us to play (Joe beat Jere and I by ten strokes, so he had a great time playing golf), free popcorn for Joe and FREE WIFI service for us. We haven't had internet connectivity for the last week, so both laptops were used the entire evening at the campsite :-)