01 June 2008

Star Gazing

We are taking a break for a week and going to the Annual Texas Star Party in the Davis Mountains of West Texas, just north of Big Bend. This will be our 3rd year to join with hundreds of other amatur astronomers to do a little star gazing in North America's darkest skies.

We'll be pitching our tent under our favorite tree and camping for the week. The ranch where we stay has a huge ranch house where they serve "all you can eat" lunches and dinners for a very reasonable price. We usually fix a light breakfast and make coffee Tico style with our Costa Rican Chorreador de Cafe in the mornings. Afternoons are spent relaxing with a good book and taking long naps. This year's party is in June so it may be warmer than we're used to. The last two trips have been in early May and even though the daytime temperatures get pretty hot, the nighttime temperatures are usually cool enough for a light jacket.

The TSP now sets up a wireless network which provides internet access all over the ranch, so we'll try and post some photos later during the week. Cell phone service is another matter. There are a couple of spots on the ranch where you can actually pick up cell phone reception if you stand real still. It's really funny to watch folks walking around pointing their cell phones at nothing, looking for signal bars. We're just going to take our Vonage V-Phone (small USB device that plugs in to laptop and gives us full access to our home phone) with us for regular telephone reception.

We've all become slaves to technology in one way or another.

¡Pura Vida!

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