THE VERY LARGE ARRAY.
Day 160 – Rob was up at 7 a.m.; I got up at 7:30. 42 degrees; it had stopped raining. Soon after I got up, 4 Sandhill Cranes flew in & were eating breakfast in the field to the north of us. Then they flew over to the field south of our RV, ate some more, then left. During that timeframe, Rob went out and tromped around in the muddy fields to get some pictures. The campground owner came out & dropped some corn on the field right in front of the RV, then he & Rob were outside talking for quite awhile. I took a shower, and when Rob came back he did the same, after cleaning gobs of mud from his shoes. While Rob was taking his shower, the cell phone rang – someone calling from New Mexico, who can that be – and I answered. A gruff voice said, “Look outside your front window” and hung up. I turned to look outside our front window, and there were 5 Sandhill Cranes eating the corn, very soon after he’d put it out for them. Rob got out of the shower, threw on some clothes, and ran outside with the camera. They were right outside our windows! (And the Cranes had muddy feet, too.)
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Before leaving to run a couple of errands and visit some sites, Rob put the NM sticker on the U.S. Travel Map on the RV. We’re slowly filling that puppy up.
Added New Mexico
We left at 9 a.m. and went into Socorro to the auto parts store. Rob got some oil for the generator. We stopped at the Socorro post office to get the mail we’d had forwarded to us via general delivery. Then we headed east on Route 60 to “The Box”, which is known as a technically challenging group of rocks for climbers. We took the dirt road to the group of red rocks and sure enough, there were plenty of climbers there. BETH, HAVE YOU DONE THE BOX YET? WE’D BET THAT YOU’D HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH IT!
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We got back on the 60 east and drove 40 miles to the “NRAO VLA”. We’d seen signs for this and had wondered what it was. Evidently it’s a big attraction in this area. The owner of the campground said we must go there. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory Very Large Array was very interesting, indeed. From the brochure, “The VLA is a powerful telescope that observes the Universe, night and day. The 27 dish-shaped antennas are tuned to a kind of light that eyes cannot see. This invisible light is in the form of radio waves. Radio waves reveal previously unseen activities of stars, galaxies, and planets and map the chemical workings of the gas and dust clouds that cause them. Optical telescopes cannot see into these places, because those same clouds block their view. Unhindered, radio waves can travel for billions of years across the vastness of space. They provide the VLA with the data that help us construct a timeline of the Universe – from its ancient past to its possible future. Since it first began watching the skies back in 1976, the VLA has observed nearly 43,000 different cosmic objects. Each of the 27 antennas in the Array weighs over 230 tons, is 82 feet across, and over 90 feet high.”
As we approached the VLA, we were amazed at the vastness of this project. The Arrays & the facilities which run them, are the only thing in this huge space of high desert. We were surprised when we arrived at how crowded they were, out in the middle of nowhere. The facility has a nice visitor’s center, gift shop, movie theatre to show a film about the VLA, and offers both a guided tour & a self-guided walking tour. They recommend you begin with the film. We decided on the self-guided walking tour (since 80 people were signed up for the next guided tour). The cost was $11 for the two of us.
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We had packed a lunch and ate parked right by one of the large antennas, then we headed back to Socorro. North of Socorro off of I-25N, there had been signs for two wildlife refuges, La Jolla and Sevilleta. We drove to both of them, hoping for auto tour routes or hiking trails, like what we’ve found at the larger, more visited refuges. But these were wildlife refuges were for the wildlife, not the people (which is good), and there wasn’t much for us to do. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home for a few supplies, then drove back to the RV. The high this afternoon was 60 degrees, partly cloudy. It was an interesting day.