Sunday, July 17, 2005
NM report
Now it's time for me to speak exhaustively about my trip.
So here are some highlights.
Here's me high-fiving a stalagmite. Unfortunately, it left me hanging.
White Sands
An incredibly amazing place, especially around sunset. Here's another cool picture.
The Very Large Array
Radio interferometry equals awesome. Or if that's not your thing, it's also quite cool just to see the place, not least because it's the setting of my favorite movie ever. "Whatever it is, it ain't local!"
Incredibly Dark Skies
The sky is incredibly dark at night in the desert. We stopped near Carrizozo to look at them. It doesn't get much more remote than this (what makes for good stargazing also makes for good atomic bomb testing; this is just west of Trinity Site, the 60th anniversary of which was yesterday). Jake put his digital camera on top of his car and took a 15-second exposure, and later I adjusted the levels in Photoshop and was amazed at the detail the camera caught - a colorful multitude of stars in Hercules and at least one deep-sky object: globular cluster M13 is visible (indicated with red arrow).
Sandia Tram
The world's longest aerial tram. Best $15 you ever spent. The view alone is worth it.
Cockroaches
Lots of them.
Jemez Mountains
North of Albuquerque, at the edge of an impressive caldera, lies an idyllic little canyon with some amazing geological formations and the like. It's a place of great natural beauty. Your cell phone doesn't work here. You can't pick up any radio stations here. The Jemez is a place to linger. There are also weird red rocks nearby.
That's about all I can stand to type. And now, a nice group picture.
I sort of balk at calling this trip a vacation. It was a vacation for the other guys, but for me it was the pedestrian act of visiting family (and in the wake of my aunt's death). Moreover, it was a bizarre sort of time travel or dimension jump, in which I spent a great deal of time imagining an alternate reality in which I hadn't dropped out of UNM. It was quite a weighty experience. Which is not to say it wasn't also exciting and fun. Even though we didn't go anywhere I hadn't been before, I still enjoyed it vastly more than I would have enjoyed a week of farting around in Iowa. I'm pleased to report that the Land of Enchantment is no less enchanting after countless visits and even after living there.
There was a lot of driving. As an experiment, I took a picture of the road every 50 miles on the way from Iowa City to Carlsbad, to document the transition of the landscape from prairie to desert. This is the result. It looks pretty cool, I think. (Photos 1-4 are in Iowa, 5-7 are in Missouri, 8-13 Kansas, 14-17 Oklahoma, 18-23 Texas, and 24-25 New Mexico.)
There was a lot of driving. As an experiment, I took a picture of the road every 50 miles on the way from Iowa City to Carlsbad, to document the transition of the landscape from prairie to desert. This is the result. It looks pretty cool, I think. (Photos 1-4 are in Iowa, 5-7 are in Missouri, 8-13 Kansas, 14-17 Oklahoma, 18-23 Texas, and 24-25 New Mexico.)
So here are some highlights.
Carlsbad Caverns
It turns out I'm a little claustrophobic. Hmm. It wasn't too bad though.
Here's me high-fiving a stalagmite. Unfortunately, it left me hanging.
White Sands
An incredibly amazing place, especially around sunset. Here's another cool picture.
The Very Large Array
Radio interferometry equals awesome. Or if that's not your thing, it's also quite cool just to see the place, not least because it's the setting of my favorite movie ever. "Whatever it is, it ain't local!"
Incredibly Dark Skies
The sky is incredibly dark at night in the desert. We stopped near Carrizozo to look at them. It doesn't get much more remote than this (what makes for good stargazing also makes for good atomic bomb testing; this is just west of Trinity Site, the 60th anniversary of which was yesterday). Jake put his digital camera on top of his car and took a 15-second exposure, and later I adjusted the levels in Photoshop and was amazed at the detail the camera caught - a colorful multitude of stars in Hercules and at least one deep-sky object: globular cluster M13 is visible (indicated with red arrow).
Sandia Tram
The world's longest aerial tram. Best $15 you ever spent. The view alone is worth it.
Cockroaches
Lots of them.
Jemez Mountains
North of Albuquerque, at the edge of an impressive caldera, lies an idyllic little canyon with some amazing geological formations and the like. It's a place of great natural beauty. Your cell phone doesn't work here. You can't pick up any radio stations here. The Jemez is a place to linger. There are also weird red rocks nearby.
That's about all I can stand to type. And now, a nice group picture.
