On our trip around Texas in '92 (see "Marfa Lights"), we also visited the Fort Davis National Historical Site and the McDonald Observatory.
We didn't visit the National Historical Site today, but we did visit the town of Fort Davis (and ate at the "Drug Store"), Fort Davis State Park, and McDonald Observatory.
We enjoyed seeing the State Park at Fort Davis and would like to come back and stay there. We were glad to have the Texas State Parks Pass as we were able to get in for free (all entry fees are covered). Unfortunately, they had had snow last night, so the "Skyline Drive" road was closed, and it was a bit too chilly for us to want to hike it instead.
We did get to visit the interpretive center and see some birds. I also was reminded of an earthquake that happened back in the 90s that was centered in the Davis Mountains. I was still at work even though it happened in the evening, and a co-worker was talking to me. All of a sudden, I started feeling sick to my stomach and thinking that I needed to get to a rest room. Harvey also looked startled, and pointed out that my officemate's phone cord that was hanging off the edge of his desk was swinging. Being non-earthquake thinking folks, we thought that maybe they were doing construction on our building and we walked over to the windows to look out (the very wrong thing to do in an earthquake!). It wasn't until later that we found out that we had felt an earthquake that was 500+ miles away.
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| Newspaper write-up about the earthquake |
From Fort Davis, we drove to the McDonald Observatory. They have guided tours, but we knew we were too late to join that, so we just did the self-guided tour. We visited the Hobby-Eberly Telescope which was quite fascinating (5 universities from the US and Germany collaborated to create this telescope). We also visited outside the other two domes - when we were here in 1992, there were so many ladybugs on the domes that they looked orange instead of white!
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| Overlooking the visitor center |
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| It was a beautiful clear day (albeit chilly!) |
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| This was one of the domes that was orange with ladybugs when we were here in May, 1992 |
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| Hobby-Eberly Telescope |
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