Then we went down the road to nearby Alpine where we toured
the free Museum of the Big Bend. Very
interesting! All this was before noon.
We had afternoon tickets for a guided tour of the University
of Texas’ McDonald Observatory. To get
there, we had to drive the highest paved road in all of Texas, nearly 7000 feet
above sea level. They have many
telescopes here and we got inside two of them.
Our guide made astronomy almost understandable. These telescopes are incredibly
complicated! A number of the research
team live on the site and sleep days so they can do their research at
night. The sky is brilliant with stars
here as there is no nearby light from a city so it’s a good location for the
telescopes. The evening turned windy and
cloudy so they might have had a hard time doing research then.
Sunday was another traveling day as we went south to
Presidio on the Rio Grande. We slowly followed
the river downstream to Lajitas. It was
interesting to see Mexico right across the river while we drove. In spots there might not be room for Crazy
Donald’s wall:
The river road, El Camino Rio, is slow and roller
coaster-like as it follows the riv er.
At one spot there is a 16% grade up to a mesa and overlook, and another
16% gradeto get back to the river level.
Bob likes his diesel torque and exhaust brake. Paige liked the scenery – very twisty and
pretty mountains.
Tonight we are at a private RV park outside of the Big Bend
National Park. We plan some non-paved
roads, some hiking, and some scenic views for tomorrow.
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