The Very Large Array (VLA) is an astronomical radio telescope south of us, just west of Magdelana New Mexico, and they held an open house last Saturday. We took the teardrop and stayed at a Forest Service Campground about a half hour to the west in Datil
Great site and wonderful camping weather. Costs only $5/night and they have vault toilets and water. A conscientious camp host kept things clean. No electricity (of course) and our efforts at percolating coffee didn't come out so good. Too weak, and we aren't sure if we just couldn't get a coarse enough grind or what. We compensated by adding Starbucks instant to our brew.
The VLA has 27 radio telescopes and they combine the signals to obtain high resolution images of the "radio sky". Our tour guide said they call this antenna Juan
And the rest of these they collectively call Amal
because "when you've seen Juan, you've seen the rest." They are great astronomers, but need work in the Dad Joke department! Nah, I just made all that up!
Actually, one of the interns gave us the tour. Her specialty is black holes, which is above my pay-grade! The open house also included three lectures, which were interesting, at varying levels of sophistication. The VLA has been around since the 1970's and one of the lecturers pointed out that the fact the antennas are on rails, and can (and are) moved around to change the resolution and detection levels, is a real 1970's solution. Today, it would be less expensive to simply build more antennas than to build a rail network and move them.
They are working on a new system, and have a prototype antenna
If they get funding and proceed with their plan, there will be a bunch of these in the immediate area, and some more in a spiral pattern around the VLA site, down into Texas, Arizona, and old Mexico.
From Datil, we drove to Bottomless Lakes State Park, near Roswell, spent the night, and went on to Dog Canyon Campground in Guadalope Mountain National Park. I don't have pictures of Bottomless Lakes, as I've shown the campground on this forum before. It's okay; has electricty, flush toilets, and showers, except they were fresh out of the last two. Yep, started fixing the plumbing while we were there, which is unfortunate since neither the campground we came from, nor the one we were going to has showers. We solved the problem by sneaking into Brantley Lake State Park, on the way, and using their showers.
We were going to stay at Bottomless Lakes again later in the week, but they didn't know if the water would be fixed by then (and evidently hadn't thought to move in porta-pots), so we changed our reservations to Brantley Lake. We called the state parks people and asked for a refund of the cancellation fee and admin fee, but they were reluctant until I mentioned that I'm a big-wig here on the Teardrop and Tiny Travel Trailer forum and suggested I would describe all of this along with the relative advantages of nearby (sort of) Texas State Parks. Surprisingly, they later did refund our fees, so maybe mentioning this forum did the trick!
But all of that was a bit of a digression. I wanted to see Guadalope Mountains NP, but we couldn't get a reservation at the Pine Springs Campground, which is the larger one near the visitor center and other attractions along the road running along the South Eastern part of the park. No problem, we stayed at Dog Canyon, which is at the north end of the park, about two hours drive from the rest of the park, and just inside the Texas Border. It's a bit isolated and we didn't see a ranger the two days we were there. (Due to lay-offs?) The campground has water, and (surprisingly) flush toilets which were clean. One each for the guys and gals in the four RV sites and all of the tent sites. Very little shade in the RV sites
We hiked in the morning, and enjoyed the solitude in the afternoon. Too windy for grilling, so we cooked on our propane stove. Rather warm in the daytime, which made the cold nights a surprise at first. The wool blanket was welcome here, as it was earlier at Datil. Contrast that with Bottomless Lakes, where the night was warm enough that we were happy to have electricity so we could use our AC.
Our perked coffee was still weak, so Shelly tried heating water and simply pouring it over the grounds in our automatic coffee maker. That worked!
So we won't have to bring the percolator or coarse ground coffee with us anymore!The second part of our trip was more-or-less business. We camped at Brantley Lake (again no pictures as I've shown the campground elsewhere) and drove up to Roswell on Wednesday to sell some rustic doll house furniture to the Miniatures and Curious Collections Museum, for them to resell. (It's an odd business, but if folks are interested in buying them, I'm happy to make 'em!)
Then, on Thursday, we drove to Lubbock Texas to the most Northwesterly HEB store we know of. They have lots of low sodium food that Shelly wants for her diet, so she stocked up.
We thought we might check out "free" camping at sites at Levelland and Littlefield. We got to the one at Levelland, a grass and dirt field, which has free water and free electicity, and no trees. "What do you think?" Shelly asked enthusiastically.
"Where are the bathrooms?" I asked.
"Oh sh*t", she replied.
"Precisely," I answered.
So we went on to the HEB and later found the Waylon Jennings RV Park in Littlefield (free for donations) had bathrooms, with padlocks on the doors. We thought about going to Palo Duro Canyon State park near Amarillo, but all of those sites were booked. So it was back to New Mexico State Parks, this time to the optimistically named Oasis, near Portalis. Made for a long day of driving and grocery shopping! But Oasis is a couple of hours closer to home than Palo Duro Canyon, so we came back and unpacked in good time today. Been to Oasis three times so far, and it has always been VERY windy.
Don't plan on using charcoal.Tom
