Archive for December, 2006
This is the West
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After leaving Carlsbad, we crossed back into Texas, driving through El Paso to get to Las Cruces for the night. The drive through the Guadalupe Mountains was simply breath-taking, and the national park there is well worth a return visit for a few days of backpacking.
Chambers of secrets
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Way back in the Permian period, over 230 million years ago, the part of Pangea around what is now Carlsbad, New Mexico, was the basin of the Delaware Sea. The accreting remains of sponges, algæ, and other organisms slowly formed a reef, which, after the sea dried up and much later geologic changes [...]
Missionary Position
The Spanish missions in San Antonio, TX are gorgeous. We saw The Alamo, as well as Misión Concepción, Misión San José, and Misión Espada. It was interesting, though, that the information panels seemed to be very much pro-mission: they portrayed the Spanish as benevolent workers trying to improve the Indians, and gave short thrift to [...]
Streaking through space
Johnson Space Center
On our way through the sprawl that is Houston, TX, we decided to take a detour to visit the Johnson Space Center. The official visitors center is called Space Center Houston and gets mixed reviews in my book.
On the plus side, it does have some original rockets, capsules, and a moon rock, though the gallery is [...]
