3-29 Site Seeing

 

Riding horses through a meadow

We had a great day. We drove 260 miles and stopped at Smokey Bear Historic Park and a Very Large Array. On the way to our next destination we saw a couple of people exercising their horse and pronghorns. We stopped in Capitan to walk through Smokey Bear Historic Park. Admission to the park was $2.00. It was a cute park with a short nature trail with a garden and Smokey Bear grave. The main building has exhibits about the National Forestry and Smokey Bear.

Smokey Bear and me

Smokey Bear grave

The Very Large Array, which is in the middle of nowhere is the most adaptable, hardest-working telescope in the world. It has 27 dish antennas that work together as a single telescope. Each antenna collects signals and sends them to a supercomputer where all the signals are combined and creates an image. Each antenna is 82 feet in diameter and weighs 230 tons. The tour was a self-guided walking tour. One interactive exhibit was two discs probably 100 feet apart, one person stands in front of each disc and speaks softly, the other person can hear them and they sound quite loud, this exhibit demonstrated how radio waves work and how the Very Large Array receives these waves. As we were walking and looking at one of the dishes we saw it move up and down and rotate in a different position. The Very Large Array is spectacular.

Larry standing in front of an antenna

Larry standing in front of the radio wave exhibit

10 of the antenna spread out in a field