To ease me into the idea of this epic journey, Jon and Peabody went with me for the first part of my roadtrip. It was really great to have them there because the vast expanse of the desert sometimes makes me feel lonely.
We hit up Marfa, the McDonald Observatory, and Balmorhea State Pool this weekend.
We drove separately so Jon could return home to Austin by Monday. I felt as though we were pressed for time, so I didn't stop as much as I would have liked to take photos of it all. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful drive through the rain-soaked green and flourishing desert landscape.
About seven hours later, our first stop was the city of Marfa.
We setup our tent at a campsite at
El Cosmico, a quirky little campground that also had yurts, a teepee, and refurbished parked trailers.
We got there a little too late to check out all the galleries, so we decided to have dinner at El Cosmico's outdoor kitchen instead.
We bought sausages & wine for dinner. I forgot that we didn't have a wine opener, but Jon used his engineer-Eagle-Scout ingenuity to figure something out.
Later on that night, we went to the
McDonald Observatory for their Star Party night program. Despite the massive clouds that were in the night sky, I naively was excited to look through telescopes and see celestial objects. We went inside, paid our admission, and were then directed to
-what I feared would happen on the only day I go to the observatory- the theater for a "virtual tour" of the night sky. I sat down in a weird mood, but I was still secretly fascinated by the PowerPoint-y astronomy lecture.
Then miracle of all miracles, the lecture was interrupted by another astronomer to announce that "The clouds have cleared up and we're going to setup the telescopes!" The guy didn't have to finish his sentence before a mob of nerds stampeded outdoors.
I tried my hand at some nighttime photography and am pretty pleased with the results I got (WARNING: this is photo-nerdy) at ISO 1600 / f2.8 / 30". I'm compelled to get a remote control for my camera now.
If you look closely, you can see the outline of the mountain and the big telescopes that look like little specks of light.
The next day we packed up and went to
Balmorhea State Park. This was my second time there, and Jon's first. He said that going to the pool was well worth the whole trip and he could see doing this again. Next time, we'll both be ready with a full snorkel setup.
To see all the photos of my trip, I'll be constantly adding to this album:
I LOVE the star party thing. Brett would die to do that. And the pool looked fab! Ahhh the desert... can't wait to see you!
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