When I was planning the Big Bend stay, one of my assumptions was that one day we’d drive up to the McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, see the telescopes, attend an evening “star party,” and then drive back. I made that assumption because, on my map of Texas, it’s only about a half-inch between Big Bend and Fort Davis. What a dipstick! It’s actually 150 miles twixt the two, 70 of which is through the park itself at 45 mph! Obviously, one doesn’t make a quick run to and from the observatory, so we cut the Big Bend stay short by one day and headed up to Fort Davis.
Doing an astronomy thing was on my list because lately I’ve become fascinated by the Milky Way and west Texas has the clearest and darkest skies in the United States, perfect for star-gazing. At the risk of sinking into a pit of interminable, mind-numbingly dull blather, a “galaxy” is a system of millions to billions of stars, along with cosmic dust and other stuff, all held together by gravitational forces. Current estimates are that there are about 100 billion galaxies, but that number may double as the Hubble telescope continues to scan the heavens. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a “spiral galaxy” that itself contains somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars. (For those trying to picture this in their heads, a billion galaxies times a billion stars in each would be a “quintillion” stars, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, of which our sun is one.)
An artistic rendition of the Milky Way galaxy that I swiped off the internet somewhere. As is apparent, our sun is just one of countless stars in the galaxy and occurs, so they say, near one of the outer spiral arms.
What makes all of this fascinating is that on a clear night, one can see millions of our neighboring stars by looking “across” the galaxy! From earth, the “transect” across the galaxy looks like a milky band across the sky. In fact, during certain times of the year one can look right through the middle of our galaxy to the center “core”! In most urban areas, it’s too light and too polluted to see the Milky Way, but my heart was set on seeing it once we got to someplace better.
Fort Davis turned out to be a special treat in many way. First, the tour of the observatory was completely fascinating. We got to see their telescopes, watch real-time images of the sun boiling and blowing off huge spurts of flaming gases, and learn about all of those incomprehensibly bizarre aspects of the universe that astronomers and physicists deal with routinely every day. Just one example: McDonald Observatory is about to enter into a multi-national effort to study “dark energy,” a force that astronomers assume must exist because the universe is not only expanding (my brain is too small to understand what that even means), its rate of expansion is increasing because something, scientists don’t know what, is apparently pushing the galaxies apart. As they explain it, “we call it ‘dark energy,’ but we don’t actually know what it is, and it may not be ‘dark’ and it may not be ‘energy.’ Maybe our understanding of the universe is wrong, or maybe we don’t understand gravity. We’re not sure.” Excuse me? There are actually people to think about these things as part of their jobs? And besides that, this is a fine time to tell me that maybe gravity isn’t what we think it is.
Secondly, I was hoping to attend a “star party” at the observatory, using one of their telescopes to peer into the night sky. Unfortunately, though, the star parties are only offered on certain nights, and not the night we were there. Disappointed, I returned to the campground and, in one of those “coincidences” that proves there is a benevolent force ruling creation, an amateur astronomer had set up in the campground with a super-duper telescope (a 15.6″ reflector, for those who know what that means) and was hosting his own star party! He gave me a personal tour of the night sky, and I got to see Jupiter and its moons, the double-star of Castor (of Castor and Pollux, the two main stars in the Gemini constellation), an incredible close-up of the moon, and I forget what else. What a treat!
An amateur astronomer, who had shown up as part of an annual gathering of amateur astronomers, graciously set up his telescope and invited campers to come by and peer into the heavens! Here he is aligning on the north star to calibrate the telescope’s motor drives that allow him to enter any celestial body into his computer and the telescope automatically aligns on the object. I cannot even begin to think what a setup like that must cost, or how he manages to transport it in his RV (visible behind the telescope).
Finally, after a disappointing few days of overcast skies in Big Bend, the night turned crystal clear, I got up at 4:00 a.m., and there was the Milky Way in stunning glory. My little baby camera isn’t very good for astrophotography, but I was able to capture this shot.
The Milky Way, as visible from behind our RV. If you look closely at the lower right-hand corner, you can see a C-shaped gap in the cloud of stars. That’s the galactic center, meaning we’re looking from our vantage point at the edge of the galaxy, right through the middle and out the other side. Ponder that for a moment.
(It’s hard for a computer-appropriate image to capture enough detail to reveal how truly impressive the Milky Way really is. A larger file, available here, is better.)
[Ed. note: Sorry for the delay in posting updates. For the past 5 days we’ve been in areas of the country where people have no internet and no cell phone coverage, and they seem to be OK with that.]
Big Bend is a different kind of national park for us. Lying along the Rio Grande River in the very southern tip of Texas, one might think it would be nothing more that mile after mile of empty wasteland, of little interest to anyone except illegal immigrants passing through on their way to enrolling in Medicare.
There’s much more to it than that, though. Big Bend consists of three separate components: the Chihuahuan desert, the Rio Grande River valley, and the Chisos Mountains, and each area we found to be worth seeing.
The Chihuahuan desert, for example, is one of four deserts in the United States: the Great Basin desert, which occurs mostly in Nevada; the Mojave Desert, which occurs in California and Arizona; the Sonoran desert, which also occurs in California and Arizona, and dips down into northern Mexico; and the Chihuahuan desert, which occurs mostly in northern Mexico, with smaller areas in New Mexico, Arizona, and West Texas, and which is the largest of North American deserts at over 140,000 square miles. What was most interesting to us, though, is that people were actually able to live in this incredibly hostile environment.
An abandoned trading post near the Castolon visitors center.Luna’s Jacal (pronounced, “yah-kahl”), which I think is Spanish for “little hovel.” Incredibly, Gilberto Luna lived in this earth and rock hovel in the late 19th century, raised eight children, and lived to be 108 years old.
The Rio Grande river section of the park was mostly just a flat expanse, well suited to swimming across undetected at midnight, but what made it worth seeing were the spectacular canyons.
Santa Elena canyon. The walls are 1500 feet high and we saw a large number of kayakers paddling upstream and then making a relaxing float trip back down.
What we enjoyed the most, though, were the Chisos mountains. The peaks rise to over 7800 feet and, incredibly, the environment is wooded and cool, completely different than the desert just a few miles away. Bear and mountain lions populate the area, and temperatures are usually about 20 degrees cooler than down on the desert floor (meaning, for example, that the day we went hiking, temperatures were in the 70s!).
Hiking down to “The Window,” which is a spectacular gap in the rocks through which one can see the expanse of the Chihuahuan desert below. Unfortunately, the hike begins with a 2.8-mile walk DOWN 1000 feet to the vista point, which means, through some asymmetry in the space-time continuum, it’s actually 3.8-miles and 1500 feet back up. Or at least it felt that way.
As interesting as we found Big Bend to be, though, we both sense that it falls into a different category of national park experiences. There are parks, like Yellowstone and Grand Tetons and Glacier, that one can go to countless times and never grow tired of the experience. Then there are parks, and we put Big Bend in that category, that are definitely worth seeing, but which are more in the category of “immunization” parks. That is, having been there, we’ve had the experience and having had it, we’re now immune and, as much as we really enjoyed this visit, we don’t have to have it again.
So, check it off the list. Next stop, Davis Mountains State Park and the McDonald Observatory.
We’ve started the 2017 western trip, having blazed through Livingston, Louisiana (nice RV park), survived the pavement hell of Louisiana and Eastern Texas, stayed overnight at Columbus, Texas (OK, but not up to our standards), and finally arriving in San Antonio. At first, we weren’t sure we’d even make this stop, seeing as how we were trying to orchestrate our stops to spend the smallest amount of time meandering along through places with little to commend them. But neither of us had ever been to San Antonio, so what the heck? It’s on the way, sort of, so a couple days layover made sense.
And we are really glad we did. Tops on my list was going to the Alamo.
I didn’t realize it, but this is *not* “the Alamo.” This is the church inside of what was the Alamo. The Alamo, as it existed in 1836, extended several blocks in all directions. Unfortunately, most of that area is now developed and only this church, and a small surrounding area, survive.
The legend of that battle has been imprinted on my mind since elementary school, but what we learned on our visit is that reality is even more dramatic than the childhood stories we all grew up with. It’s hard to imagine: 150 volunteers, plus or minus, against a determined army of maybe 10 times that number; Santa Ana’s raising of the red “no quarter” flag; and the last-minute realization that help would never arrive. In these circumstances, William Travis called the men together and said, in essence, “Look, here’s the deal. Reinforcements are not coming. We cannot defeat an army of this size, and if we stay and fight, the result is certain death for all of us. But we fight for principles that matter and we only have two other choices: surrender or flee, either way announcing to our countrymen that freedom and liberty are not worth dying for. It’s not for me to tell you what to do,” and then, drawing his sabre and carving a line in the sand, he continued, “but I intend to stay and fight and die right here, because I believe liberty, and patriotism, and everything that is dear the American character are worth dying for. And I ask any man who’s willing to stand with me to cross this line.” At that moment, every one of the volunteers (save only one!) crossed the line. And they stayed and fought, dying either in the ensuing battle or, if wounded and captured (including, perhaps, Davey Crockett), when lined up against a wall and shot.
The rest, as they say, is history. As has happened so many times over our history, the enemy’s “victory” inspired a sense of American outrage, which led to an overwhelming response, which led to a crushing defeat of Santa Ana and his army, which forced Santa Ana to save his hide by signing a treaty relinquishing the territory, and the Republic of Texas was born. As often as this pattern of events seems to repeat itself, Wendy and I sometimes wonder whether our national motto should be changed from E Pluribus Unum to Non Ursa Poke.
Our second objective was San Antonio’s famous River Walk. In 1921, a disastrous flood hit San Antonio, and the city planners did what such people always do in such cases … they decided to channelize the portion of the river that ran through downtown, and then pave over it. As it turns out, though, they encountered the dreaded little-old-ladies-in-garden-clubs contingent. Under the impetus of that formidable force, the idea of channelizing the river remained, but it’s flow was regulated by an upstream dam and a plan created to develop the corridor. Later on, through the efforts of the WPA, some 17,000 feet of walkways, bridges, and landscaping were added along the channel. Over the years, the number of restaurants, bars, and shops increased, the size and layout of the River Walk changed and grew, and it now stands are one of the most successful urban projects of its type, serving as a model for countless other developments, including the Little Sugar Creek Greenway in Charlotte, NC. And it is completely charming.
It’s hard to describe the stunning beauty of the River Walk. This is not a fake picture. This is a snapshot I grabbed as we strolled along the path one night. Even more, our visit to San Antonio also coincided with the city’s annual “Fiesta” (sort of a Hispanic version of Mardi Gras), and as we had dinner one night at a River Walk restaurant, we were treated to periodic concerts by passing boats filled with high school Mexican bands (guitars, violins, trumpets, and all that) gearing up for their upcoming competitions.
Oh, and one more thing. In one of those improbable coincidences that proves something, Son #1 had a business to San Antonio while we were there and we met up for dinner!
Sitting along the River Walk, with Mexican bands in the background and enjoying, let’s see … a few margaritas, a couple glasses of wine, two hors d’oeuvres, exceedingly large entrees, and two orders of crème brulee. Such things are what make travel “broadening” (at least in the sense of girth).
We leave in a couple weeks for this year’s trip out west (more on that below), but prior to the trip it was time for our “traditional” pre-trip campout with the with Little Darlings. I say “traditional” because we did a pre-trip campout once, and the way our family works, once is enough to create a tradition. And once a tradition is established, we can never not do it because, well, it’s a tradition. All of which leads to a geometrically expanding list of spontaneously generated random obligations. And I put “we” in quotes because Wendy is out in Seattle with the other Little Darlings, spending Easter with Laura while Robert is deployed, and wasn’t here for the campout.
This year’s campout was a great success, although not for the reason I expected. Cliff selected the location (FD Roosevelt State Park), which is only 30 miles from the LaGrange house, so I went over early to snag the best sites, Cliff showed up around noon, and Jennifer showed up mid-afternoon. We all assumed that we would occupy ourselves with an excess of activities at the campground and nearby Callaway Gardens. Some that turned out to be true, and in fact we did ride bikes at Callaway, go to the butterfly house, have a picnic lunch, and watch the birds of prey show.
Riding bikes from the Discovery Center to the butterfly house, a distance we thought would prove too much for the younger cousins. Not so, though. All of them showed themselves determined not to quit. I have no idea where they got that trait.
And, at the campground, we skipped the park-provided hot dog supper, Eggstravaganza Easter egg hunt, archery, reptile encounter, and night hike and picnic, limiting our in-park activities to Saturday night’s bluegrass concert.
But what most occupied us was the girls’ fanatical commitment to geocaching. For those not familiar with the activity, geocaching involves using a GPS (or a GPS-enabled app on a smart phone) to find various “caches” that others have hidden in the woods, often containing little dime-store trinkets that one can exchange for other dime-store trinkets brought along for just that purpose. An good description of geocaching and all that it entails can be found on the Geocaching 101 website.
What an experience!! Four little girls, racing around the woods with smart phones in hand, clambering over each other in a frenetic drive to find the cache and exchange trinkets. For three days, the geocaching frenzy ran unabated. “Please, please can we go geocaching? Please, Grandpa, please, please…” First it was two caches near the campsite, then seven caches along a loop trail, then I’m not sure how many on another hike. And we also logged the “official” FDR State Park cache. Most of the state parks have official caches and I got each of the kids a “Georgia State Park Geocaching Passport” book. After getting a certain number of state park official caches, the kids are eligible for souvenir coins. (As you might expect, adding a reward like earning coins to the process only made them more fanatical.)
I forget which cache this is, but it’ll give you the idea. The cache was contained in an ammo box hidden under some rocks about 20 yards off the trail. The app we used (Cachly) displays a compass with an arrow indicating the bearing and range to the cache, and then it’s a matter of following the app until close to the cache location, at which point it becomes a challenge to figure what the dastardly owner did to make the ammo box hard to find.
The kids had a total blast and the experience gave me grounds for optimism as well. Except for the usual risks of running around in the woods, which are numerous (ticks, rattlesnakes, slippery rocks, cuts, bruises, poison ivy, etc.) but usually not totally fatal, geocaching is a completely fun activity for kids, and the grownups can turn the kids loose and let them have as much UNSUPERVIZED fun as they want. I read an article once that noted it wasn’t that many years ago, certainly during my lifetime, that except for the time when they were actually in school, kids were basically free of adult supervision by the time they were eight years old. Heck, we used to jump on our bikes and ride to school at that age, and to the park, and to the “wash” (a dry river bed), and the ball fields, and the local 7-11, and the parents had no idea where we were or what we were doing. The only requirement is that we had to be home “by the time the street lights come on.” Living that way not only required parents willing to let their kids loose at what appears nowadays to be an early age, it required children willing to venture out without someone at hand to protect them. On both counts, those days are gone. Good grief, it sometimes seems like even college students nowadays can’t survive on their own without adults providing them with safe rooms and pacifiers. So, I’ve wondered whether the biological/psychological/emotional capabilities that allow parents to leave their kids alone and kids to thrive on their own have been lost. Nope. A campground is the perfect place to turn the LDs loose and let them do whatever they want, and adding geocaching to the mix and letting the kids run around in the woods, on their own, unsupervised, makes it even better.
So, with the pre-trip campout in the books, it’s now it’s time to get ready for the trip out west. This year’s trip will take us to San Antonio, Big Bend National Park, up to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands, then to Tucson to visit Wendy’s sister, then up to Petrified Forest National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, Blanding (Utah), all five Utah national parks, and then down to the Grand Canyon. With the exception of Mesa Verde, I’ve never been to any of these places. Forty-seven days and 5300 miles. Further updates to start in late April.
Well, yesterday was little Sally’s last day. On our February trip to Florida, she developed a persistent cough, which was diagnosed several times as bronchitis, but which turned out to be a tumor above the palate. There was really nothing that could be done, and she was in pain, and we knew in our hearts that the inevitable course of events was too much for our little friend to bear. So, we elected to use a service somewhat akin to pet hospice: a vet came to the house and little Sally spent her last few moments here at home, in our laps, with her favorite toy (called “Purple Minky”). (It’s too complicated to explain unless you can recite most of Inspector Clouseau’s lines by heart).
Sally (on the left), AKA registered as “Sally Princess Buttercup LBD Byrnwyck.” The “LBD” stands for “Little Brat Dog,” a title she earned every day with her incredibly charming, but equally stubborn, dachshund disposition.We tried several times to persuade Sally that she was a dog, and we were people, and therefore in the natural order of things, we told her what to do, not vice versa. It never worked and we just gave up.Sally was generally a good sport when it came to things such as being made to pose as an elf, although you can see she’s pretty much exasperated by the indignity of it all.
So, with thirteen years of great memories, and a fondness for our little friend that will warm our hearts forever, we say goodbye.
In telling folks about our plans to conclude this year’s Florida trip at Lake Okeechobee, people kept saying things like, “I hope you like alligators…,” or “you’ll have some interesting experiences, that is, if you think snakes and alligators can be interesting…,” or, my favorite, “Lake Okeechobee is a great place to go fishing, well, except you really shouldn’t go near the water because it’s basically loaded up with alligators and besides that my dad was fishing there and found himself wading in a sea of water moccasins…” Oh good grief. The litany of dreadful, foreboding encounters was so extensive and constant, we seriously considered just canceling that portion of trip and going home.
It was fine. In fact, it was better than fine. It was wonderful.
And, once again, inspiring. Our first day at Lake Okeechobee was forecasted to be coolish and raining, so he drove over to Fort Pierce to see the Navy SEAL Museum.
A statue commemorating the rescue of Lieutenant Tommy Norris by Petty Officer Mike Norton. During a mission in Viet Nam, Norris was so severely wounded that he was presumed dead. Nevertheless, Norton braved a hailstorm of bullets, rescued Norris, and then, although badly wounded himself, put his own life jacket on Norris to swim Norris out to another SEAL vessel, acts of heroism and bravery so compelling that Norton received the Medal of Honor. Incredibly, though, after LT Norris recovered from his near-fatal wounds, he returned to duty and himself engaged in acts of heroism so compelling that HE won the Medal of Honor. Wendy and I are standing there, reading all this with tears in our eyes, and we’re not through the front door yet.
Inside, the museum was everything you’d expect. One inspiring display after another explaining the whole SEAL concept, from intensive BUDS training in San Diego (where two-thirds of the volunteers can’t take it and drop out), to specialization in various aspects of modern warfare, to samples of the equipment used, to the operations of SEAL teams. As you would expect, some of the most famous SEAL missions are illustrated, including the rescue of Captain Phillips from Somali pirates to, of course, the granddaddy of them all, the raid on the compound in Abbottabad and the elimination of Osama bin Laden.
The code of conduct for Navy SEALs, very similar to the Army’s Soldier’s Creed, or the Ranger Creed, although one should note one particular element: “I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions.” It is this principle that led to the condemnation and shunning of the SEAL (whose name I refuse to utter) who violated his oath and published “No Easy Day,” the account of the raid on Abbottabad. I know most people don’t understand why describing the mission was such an act of betrayal, but personally I give thanks that he was ordered to return all of the royalties he earned.
Nearby the campground we found another interesting attraction. As we learned last year, one problem faced by the Everglades is nutrient-rich runoff from farms, which leads to overly dense plant growth that actually chokes the wetlands. To counter that problem, local governments have built a number of treatment impoundments upstream of the Everglades to remove nutrients, and one such facility is located just a few miles north of the campground. That facility diverts about ten percent of the flow of Taylor Creek, retains that flow in a series of basins where overly rich plant growth is acceptable and intended, and then returns the water, now reduced in nutrient levels, back to the creek. These basins are, as one would expect, wildly rich in plant and animal life, and the county has actually built paths around the basins where one can stroll and enjoy the rich diversity of life that flourishes there.
One of the treatment ponds for Taylor Creek. It is remarkable that the county would take something as mundane as a treatment system and make it inviting and user-friendly, such as the thatch-covered gazebo where people can pause while walking around the area.
We saw birds of all stripes (herons, anhingas, egrets, ibises, ducks, cranes, songbirds), turtles, butterflies, and even an otter. (No snakes.) (At least none that I pointed out to Wendy.) (That was a joke.) It was particularly fun to watch the birds catching and eating fish, even if the fish did seem too large to ease down the gullet.
And yes, we did see alligators. Dozens of them. Mostly basking in the ponds, although a couple were sunning themselves along the path, something that Wendy found particularly disconcerting.
This six-footer slowly moved away from the path as I approached, although it was hard not to keep in mind dozens of youtube videos showing alligators spinning suddenly and charging hapless onlookers. As I was approaching to take advantage of this photo op, I just kept reminding myself that there are things in life worse than getting bitten by an alligator, although I must admit none actually come to mind.
One last thought. We found ourselves parked next to a couple from Pennsylvania, Herb and Mary Ellen Truhe. It turns out he is a retired policeman (27 years on the force) who comes from a family of wide-ranging police experience. And we found him to be one of the most friendly, knowledgeable, and decent human beings it’s ever been my pleasure to meet. Just one example to illustrate the point. He once had to arrest a drug addict on a parole violation warrant. As he picked up the guy, he noted that the addict looked pretty bad, obviously strung out. “When did you last eat?” he asked. “Three days ago,” the addict responded. So, incredibly, Herb brought him home, sat him down with his family, and gave him a decent meal, before carting him off to jail. “The only thing I ask,” Herb said to the addict, “is that you treat my family with the same respect I’m showing to you.” As it turns out, while they were having supper, the addict engaged with Herb’s teenage daughter, telling her at one point, “You need to stay away from drugs, or you’ll end up like me.” I don’t know how all that ended up, but it’s easy to imagine a story of redemption from a simple act of grace and a home-cooked meal. So there we have it: more inspiration from something as common as a neighbor at a campground.
Parked next to the Herb and Mary Ellen Truhe. The campground was very nice and, contrary to our fears before arriving, completely free from dachshund-eating alligators and snakes.
We’re not sure about a Florida trip next year. We’ve basically explored the state to our satisfaction, noting the areas we like (as well as those we’re not so fond of). We may return next year to a couple favorite places, or we may start exploring the options for other warmer climes. Either way, though, this was definitely one of the better Florida trips.
First things first: the campground was a dump. Now on to better things…
On Friday, we made a pair of inspiring stops. First we went by the Valiant Warbirds Museum. It has a very nice collection of warbird aircraft, such as this F4F (one of the aircraft that my dad flew in World War II).
An F4F, easily recognizable by the manually operated landing gear (29 cranks to get it up, 27 cranks to get it down) stowed in the fuselage side. My dad ended up flying F4U Corsairs by the war’s end.
But what made the museum particularly memorable was three aircraft in particular. The first was this B-25 Mitchell, memorable because one of the original pilots, Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot in fact, COL Richard E. Cole, is still alive and is a regular attendee at the annual air show here. He’s 101 years old, but still mentally acute and physically fine (at least for a man of his age).
A B-25 Mitchell, still in operating condition and flying regularly at air shows around the country.
For those not familiar with Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo (and who haven’t seen 30 Seconds Over Tokyo), after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, along with a long string of Japanese victories in the South Pacific, when American morale was unbearably low, President Roosevelt decided that the American military needed to do something to give Americans cause for hope. The proposal was an improbable idea of launching bombers off of a carrier, flying to Japan to inflict tactically minor but psychologically devastating damage.
The attack was planned and led by Jimmy Doolittle, a famous military test pilot, civilian aviator, and aeronautical engineer. In April 1942, sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers under his command were launched without fighter escort from the USS Hornet, each with a crew of five men and carrying four 500-pound bombs, three with conventional explosives and one incendiary. Doolittle was in the lead bomber and had only 450 feet of deck in front of him. The plan called for the B-25s to bomb military targets in Japan, and to continue westward to land in China. Unfortunately, Hornet was detected by a Japanese picket boat and the bombers had to launch 200 miles before the planned launch point. After flying 650 miles at wave-top level, the bombers struck 10 military and industrial targets in Tokyo, two in Yokohama, and one each four other cities. Fifteen aircraft reached China, but all crashed, while the 16th landed in the Soviet Union. All but three of the 80 crew members initially survived the mission. Eight airmen were captured by the Japanese in China; three of those were later executed. The B-25 that landed in the Soviet Union was confiscated and its crew imprisoned for more than a year.
The second was this F-16, a special aircraft because it is the actual aircraft, one of two, on constant patrol over the skies of New York on September 11, 2001.
One of two F-16s flying patrol over New York on 9/11. The F-16 is also an important airplane for me because my dad was part of the team that designed the side-stick, fly-by-wire system that was revolutionary at the time.
And finally, my favorite. This C-47 actually flew in the D-Day invasion, flying two missions to drop paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne, and then a third mission to tow a glider to Normandy. The initial drops consisted of soldiers from the 505th, 507th, and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments. All of the paratroopers on D-Day suffered badly, but the 82nd was particularly hard hit. Forty-six percent of the 82 Airborne soldiers dropped in on D-Day were killed, wounded, or missing. Major General Ridgway’s post-battle report stated, “… 33 days of action without relief, without replacements. Every mission accomplished. No ground gained was ever relinquished.”
A C-47 (the military version of a DC-3) that actually transported 82nd Airborne paratroopers on D-Day.
I hate to sound sappy, but after walking around this place, and hearing these stories, and seeing these aircraft, Wendy and I were both emotionally depleted, both of us sensing that we really were standing on holy ground. Between the stories of Doolittle’s raid and D-day, it proved the truth of Eisenhower’s comment that there is no force on earth like that of a democracy enraged.
Then it was off to the Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum. The Memorial honors over 9000 police officers who have been killed in the line of duty. The current rate is that a police officer is killed every two days, and 2016 was a particularly tragic year, with 21 deaths in ambush-style shootings alone. I guess such is to be expected when government officials at the very highest level curry political favor by identifying police as the enemy and by declaring that ruthless punks and thugs are martyrs. This memorial honors those who bear the consequences of such political pandering, such as the five police officers killed in Dallas last year, shot down by a thug who said he was upset about the recent police shootings and wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.
The memorial to fallen officers. The walls contain the names of 9000 police officers killed in the line of duty. The statue in back shows a police officer with his arms around two children.
We did pause for a moment to honor Officer Mark Cross, the son of our good friends in Atlanta, who was gunned down by drug-dealing gang-bangers on April 23, 2005. He is survived by his wife and two children.
One section of the wall. Officer Mark Cross’s name occurs in the center of this panel.
Again, we found ourselves standing on holy ground. It’s hard to describe the emotional impact of spending a day immersed in the bravery and self-sacrifice of such great Americans.
And we finally got to see a launch. We tried to see a launch back in 2015, when the launch was scrubbed due to something about “down range tracking.” Then we tried again on Thursday, but the launch was scrubbed due to something involving “nozzle thrust thingies.” But on Friday, we finally got to see the SpaceX Falcon9 rocket take off, even if it did quickly disappear into the clouds.
A Falcon9 rocket lifting off from pad L39 to resupply the International Space Station.
On edit: Good grief. How could I forget to post this? We also went to the Kennedy Space Center. Although we had been here before, this time was a special treat. We went to the Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit. It’s hard to describe what one sees and experiences without spoiling the surprise of anyone who may go there in the future, but after walking through a lobby where there is shown a 360-degree film about the history of the Space Shuttle program, the wall in front turns translucent and there, right before us, tilted on one side, is Atlantis itself. The whole room broke into applause. And Atlantis is huge: about the same size as an Airbus 320, 125 feet long, with a wingspan of 78 feet, and weighing as much as 220,000 pounds at takeoff. Which is why it is lifted off under the power of two solid rocket boosters plus a main engine fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, developing in total an earth-shaking 7 million (that’s million) pounds of thrust. The screen then raises and reveals this:
Space Shuttle Atlantis, one of five that were built. Of 135 missions in the Space Shuttle program, Atlantis flew 33, including several to repair and upgrade the Hubble space telescope.
As you would expect, a portion of the Atlantis display recounted the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, and honored the crewmen on those flights, but the display really wasn’t about the cost of exploration, it was about the glory of exploration, the human need to go new places and learn new things, and the indomitable human spirit that allows to achieve the impossible. By this point, Wendy and I were really getting tired of being inspired!
Besides all of that, we also found time for a tour of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, made all the more memorable by the appearance if this little guy, swimming around in the middle of a salt marsh. Go figure.
A stingray near the shore of a lake in the middle of the salt marsh. He appeared to be scooting along the shore, flapping his little arm-things, maybe digging up little crustaceans?
On edit: Oops, I left off a couple interesting photos. First, this one of a Painted Bunting, a bird I’ve always wanted to see but never have.
Painted Bunting hanging around the Merritt Island NWR Visitor Center. I was one of about 10 photographers all trying to squeeze in to get a picture.
And, of course, one of these:
This guy was pretty small, maybe only 4 or 5 feet long. Even still, I kept my distance.
Next stop: Lake Okeechobee. We’re not sure exactly what to expect. Everyone keeps telling us to expect “experiences” with alligators and water moccasins.
For the umpteenth time in the past three decades, we find ourselves back at the Fort Wilderness campground. And once again, here we are without any youngsters at a destination that is seemingly not conceived for unaccompanied old coots like us. So, what gives?
Part of the answer lies in our appreciation for the Disney commitment to excellence, something I’ve noted numerous times before. It is a refreshing break from modern tolerance of mediocrity to be somewhere where there is a singular driving force to do everything as well as it can be done.
And this instance of our recurring migration had a special objective: a visit to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. What a place, even though we missed out on the one attraction we most wanted to experience: the Kilimanjaro Safari. It’s a weird story, but apparently the animals have free reign in the area where the tour meanders along, and Disney shuts down the excursion when the animals have congregated on the roadway along the designated route. At our scheduled time, several ostriches, of all things, had parked themselves along the pathway and, after an hour of waiting for those improbable but stubborn creatures to move on, the authorities decided the situation was hopeless, cancelled the ride, and gave us all bonus coupons good for priority admission to any attraction in any park. Not useful for us, but a nice gesture, even though it symbolized the perfect irony of the Disney empire thwarted by a cartoonish bird.
Even still, the Wild Animal Park provided a wonderful experience. The Lion King musical was as good as anything one would see on Broadway, and the encounters with the animals occurred in habitats that seemed strikingly natural and not at all “zoo-ish.”
There are too many pictures to post them all here, but these pictures of a Lowland Gorilla and a Sumatran Tiger (the smallest of all tigers at “only” 200-300 pounds) illustrate the point. As does this little weaver finch. I watched as this little guy carefully wove a nest: over the top, under the bottom, around the branch, over and under, over and under, again and again. Just like a human weaving a basket, except this little rascal is a bird! Who taught the bird to do that?
And I had a chance to do little “photography” in addition to enjoying the park.
One little bit of creativity that I enjoy involves using a special in-camera filter to grey-out everything but a single selected color. For this shot, I eliminated all colors except for orange.This shot was done by taking three pictures rapidly using three different exposures, then using a computer program to combine them into a single picture, a process known as “high dynamic range” photography. The effect is that the image duplicates what the human eye can see, able to see both bright and dark areas simultaneously, something a camera cannot do without computer processing.
Back to Disney. I guess the one aspect of the Disney experience, and perhaps the one that most compels us to come back year after year, is the way it seems to elevate human nature. I noted in a prior post the comment made by one visitor that impressed me as a perfect summation of my sentiments: “I guess if you’re not happy here, there aren’t a lot of places you’ll ever be happy.” True indeed. Even after the Kilimanjaro Safari frustration of waiting for an hour, only to be turned away unfulfilled, something that one might think would create a flood of nastiness among those waiting in a crowded line, people were funny, and friendly, and good natured, and just adapted and moved on to other things. What if all of life operated thusly?
One of my hobbies is amateur radio (call sign K4EAK). I have a nice little setup in the house in LaGrange, from where I’ve spoken to people in all 50 states and several hundred different countries. I even once spoke to guys in Europe by using special equipment to bounce a radio signal off the moon! Our local club assists first responders with communications during severe weather outages, as well as doing other public service tasks. I have a pretty good mobile setup in the truck, and from time to time I even play on the radio while we travel around in ACE. There’s an amateur radio chapter in our motorhome association, and a few times we’ve met up with them in various locations, like this trip back in 2014. All of this is pretty geeky, and most people would (rightly) assume that ham radio guys are mostly nerdish dweebs, who generally keep their noses stuck in various electronical gizmos, and who for the most part have only marginal interpersonal skills. Think of Big Bang Theory come to life.
If you’ve gotten this far, this part of our Florida trip involved a descent into the deepest, darkest possible recesses of nerdism: the second-largest “hamfest” in the world, a place where thousands (literally) of hams congregate to buy and sell new and used equipment, attend seminars on various communications topics, and “socialize” (using a generous definition of the term).
A panorama view of Central Florida Fairgrounds (Orlando), where hundreds of RVs and thousands of ham radio guys have congregated for the 2017 “Hamcation.”
The “swap meet” (the indoor version, but there’s also an outdoor “tailgate” version with hundreds of sellers) and the vendor area (where dealers and manufacturers peddle their latest wares).
And since a couple dozen members of the motorhome club were in attendance, we also set up one night for a potluck supper:
About 36 members and guests from the “Family Motor Coach Association” Amateur Radio Chapter set up between a couple rows of member’s motorhomes.
I know what you’re thinking: what was poor Wendy doing during all of this, seeing as how she has a mostly normal personality and finds my ham radio activities about as dull as a fence post? My answer is, who cares? No, I’m kidding. That was a joke. I’m actually very grateful that she puts up with these little eccentricities of mine with little (well, mostly little) objection. She did spend one day visiting our son-in-law’s parents down in Lakeland, where she was able to do the Frank Lloyd Wright tour at Florida Central College, a college that has been described as the most beautiful campus in the United States. As the tour website puts it, “The story of how a Methodist college with no endowment – during the Great Depression and World War II – was able to not only convince one of the most sought after architects of the time to draw plans for their school, but was also able to afford to build them, is a wonderfully entertaining story.”
And we both enjoyed the evening get-togethers of the ham radio club. For all of the nerd-jokes that attend an event such as this, the people are actually friendly, welcoming, and interesting. Next stop: Fort Wilderness and Walt Disney World! Woo hoo!
We love Cedar Key. In fact, last year this was probably our favorite spot in the Florida tour. But twixt then and now, on September 2, 2016 to be precise, Hurricane Hermine made landfall at St. Marks as a Category 1 hurricane, with the eastern-side winds (the worst of the storm) making a direct hit on Cedar Key. The Weather Channel and other news coverage showed poor little Cedar Key being pummeled by waves and wind, with one scene, broadcast again and again, showing an entire dock breaking free and crashing into the shoreline. We were nervous as we left Topsail Hill Preserve and headed for Cedar Key. What would we find?
Nothing. Really. Except for the telltale color of a few new roofs, one would be hard pressed to detect any evidence of a hurricane.
So, what gives? Where’s all the death, damage, and destruction that we saw on TV? A waitress in one of the burger stops said that everything was patched up and businesses were operating and back to normal in eight days! Apparently, Florida has about a gazillion contractors who descend on hurricane-hit areas within days and start the rebuilding process (which was mostly minor patch-up here and there). And Cedar Key was doubly benefited in that Hermine hit a few days before the annual “Pirate Festival,” which as near as I can tell, involves thousands of nearby residents showing up in pirate costumes for a week of drinking, carousing, and saying “a-a-a-r-g-h” to each other, except that a large percentage of them work in building trades and they figured, I guess, that as long as they were there anyway, they might as well earn some drinking money.
Besides that, as the locals explained it, the damage wasn’t that bad anyway. We struck up a conversation with one of the guys who runs a local fishing charter, and who shed more light on the absence of any catastrophic destruction, something we should have known. Apparently the news folks, desperate for dramatic footage, would walk around, stand in a few inches of water, and zoom in on the water to make it look light an sea of wind and tsunamis. One guy even leaned sideways as he broadcast to make it look like he was struggling to fight the force of the winds and stay upright. The guy said he watched the broadcaster, wondering “what is this idiot doing?”
The explanation, of course, is that we were watching news stories. As Ken Myers points out, they don’t call them stories for no reason. The model for news coverage is not teaching, but fiction. That is, all of the elements that make for a great novel also make for great “news” and therefore drive the coverage: drama, tension, suspense, tragedy, and heroism. And like fiction, a connection to the truth is not an essential element. A degree of verisimilitude helps, but only to provide a backdrop of plausibility. And this is “real news.” “Fake news” is even worse. No wonder we’re all so stupid.
There was some damage in Cedar Key, to be sure, which is what one would expect from a 5.8-foot storm surge and an incredible 22.8 inches of rain! For example, one hotel had the ground floor flooded (but only in the area where it negligently failed to extend the sea wall), a falling-down building, not even open for business when we were here last year, fell down some more during the storm. Some railings and terraces had to be replaced and, of course, many of the roofs went bye-bye. As we drove around in the residential areas one day, we did notice a few, maybe a half-dozen, trees that had been snapped off near the top. Overall, much less damage than we feared based on the sensational coverage we had seen.
So, since everything survived just fine, what we do in Cedar Key? Everything we loved about this place last time. Toured around in the nature areas, ate at world famous Tony’s Seafood, and enjoyed the warm weather (mid-70s and sunny with light, trade-wind-like breezes).
A confederate soldier’s grave at the old Shiloh Cemetery, just a short bike-ride away from the campground.We love to go on picnics, this time at the Levy County campground, near the “Mounds Unit” of the Lower Suwanee National Wildlife Refuge. It has nice little water/electric campsites, and costs only $15 per night.Even a foggy morning is photogenic in its own way.Nigel. His buddies, hundreds of them, are off diving head-first into the water, or skimming along the surface, or riding the updrafts near the buildings. Hard to believe that pelicans were once endangered.
So, Cedar Key remains one of our favorite places and a sure stop on every future winter trip to Florida. Next stop on this trip: Orlando for a ham radio thingie, then off to Disney World.
