Balmorhea State Park 12-28-14

On the advice of our friends, Jeff and Jan, we made a stop at Balmorhea State Park.  This park has some deep natural water and people travel here to do some skin diving!!  Upon checking in we found out that in nearby Davis, Texas is the University of Texas, McDonald Observatory.  So we set up the RV and off we went.  The scenery along the way was fascinating.

But, after over an hour drive and a lot of elevation we could see the telescopes!

 

We kept driving and by the time we arrived it was pitch black dark and there was no one on the road with us.  We thought we would be the only ones there.

We got to the parking lot and it was full.  We went from thinking we were the only ones that would be there and lo and behold there were about 1000 people there!

We went to the amphitheater by following the red lights on the ground.  Yup, it was one very cold night but the Observatory was so far from any city the night sky was chock full of stars!

 

Sadly, there is no way to take any photos of the night sky - so we took a "selfie" of us all decked out in our winter woolies.  How do you like that headlight on the cap???

 

The star party was excellent.  But, it was very cold up on the mountain top.  So we only stopped to check out one of the telescopes.  We saw one galaxy in the telescope and decided that it was just too cold to stand in line for another telescope viewing.  But it was a wonderful evening. 

Tomorrow we head to New Mexico for our last stop before we head back to Arizona for the start of 2014!   It was a wonderful 2013 tour.   And when we get to Arizona we'll start planning the 2014 adventure.