Everyone loves a parade

Fortunately, we had been up for awhile already when the band started to play at 6:30am.  The band members and all the other participants were garbed in archaic military costume.  Maybe November 27th is an important date in the Mexican Revolution?  I found a website with this summary:

Nov.27 > Orozco defeats the Federals at Pedernales - Villa is repelled in a reckless attack on Ciudad Chihuahua (the Battle of Tecolote), narrowly escaping disaster 


At least 20 men on horseback were taking part in the parade: we saw them heading toward downtown as we were leaving the city.  At least a hundred people were also walking on the highway toward Guadalupe.  I haven't been able to find any news about this on the net, but that might be because it's Sunday. 


Our Zacatecas photos were uploaded in a hurry; I'm not sure why some of them got uploaded two or three times, nor why both processed and unprocessed versions were uploaded.  So far my internet connection has been too crappy for me to delete the album and upload just one set of the decent images.


It was good to take a rest day yesterday: we both felt refreshed when we set out this morning.


The drive today was pretty uneventful, until late in the day we missed a turn and in attempting to get us on the correct highway, I navigated us along a very minor road through several rural villages.  Those villagers are serious about slowing traffic through town: they had topes (giant speed bumps) every 100m or so on the main street through the village.  That made for slow going.  Topes are also less entertaining than the mixed herd of goats, sheep, cows, horses and burro that caused the other significant delay along that side road.  The herdsman and his dog moved them past the car in under 10 minutes, so that wasn't too bad.  Unfortunately the rain and thick clouds made it too dark to take pictures of the herd moving past.


We passed the 6000km mark on the trip odometer before we stopped for the night.


Tomorrow we should make it to Oaxaca!

A rolling stone

We passed the 5000km mark on our trip odometer today. I guess it will wrap before we get home. Last night we stayed in a cheap no tell motel in Chihuahua. The desk clerk was very friendly, the room was very clean, if rather basic, and the noise was about what you would expect: couples coming and going and the noise of the freeway outside. Tonight we paid about twice as much for our hotel. The room is much more nicely appointed, certainly with a better grade of toilet paper, but there is a very loud rock stage in the square outside that may continue until the wee hours, and as I write this at 8:30pm, the wall behind me vibrates occasionally as workmen on the other side hammer or drill into it as they renovate the street-facing shop. Hopefully they'll knock off for the night sometime soon. We are now veterans of the Mexican highway system. The toll roads make for easy driving. In Durango, the non-toll highways follow the convention that slower vehicles must pull onto the shoulder to let faster vehicles pass. However, the road is narrow enough that vehicles traveling in the opposite direction also need to pull over onto the shoulder to allow the pass to complete. The upshot is that you always need to be alert for traffic coming in the other direction in your lane. Makes for more challenging driving. It has been interesting to observe the variations in the desert flora along the trip: mesquite and occasional Joshua trees in the Mojave, mesquite+saguaro cactus+barrel cactus in the Sonoran desert, sand dunes+mesquite+prickly pear+pistachios in Chihuahua, giant Dr. Seuss yuca+pecans+pistachios in Durango. Our travels today were uneventful. We encountered several army patrols along the highway; even drove in convoy with one for half an hour or so before they stopped using both lanes and let us pass. I'm not sure whether the extra patrols make me feel safer or more concerned, but either way, nothing of note happened.

Mexican Adventure: Photos from the US

Fire in the sky

Too many highlights from the last two days: I don't know where to begin.  Michelle covered a lot in her blog.  A big one from yesterday: we saw a daytime fireball in the sky north of the Grand Canyon at about 5pm!  The fireball track was nearly vertical and very slightly east of north, starting at maybe 50 degrees altitude and descending to about 30 degrees.  It got slowly brighter, dimmed suddenly about 2/3 of the way along its track, then brightened again before winking out.  Very impressive!  It was considerably brighter than Jupiter, which was also visible in the twilight.  I would say it was also brighter than Venus.

Observing from Death Valley was a surprise.  I set up the scope at the Furnace Creek airport.  Not too many lights visible, though there was one annoying sodium vapour yard light off to the north.  Also, some white light came on periodically from a shed.  Still, not too bad in terms of local light pollution.  I expected dark skies, but the skies at Merritt are considerably darker.  The light dome from Las Vegas rises quite high in the eastern skies and there was a much fainter glow to the southwest that might have been LA but that a local claimed was the China Lake weapons range.  That said, Andromeda was directly overhead and I could see much farther out along its disc with my 7x50 binoculars than I recall seeing before.  Unsurprisingly, the dust lanes were not as easy to see in the 120mm refractor as what I'm used to with the 10" or 15" dobs.  There was a lot of turbulence early in the evening, partly due to some hazy clouds that formed as the rain from the previous day evaporated, probably partly due to normal temperature changes as night fell.  I only observed until around 9pm.  By then the air was getting somewhat steadier.  I think I was able to see the great red spot on Jupiter by 9pm, whereas at 7pm I could barely make out the equatorial bands.

The colours in Death Valley were quite remarkable, as was the variety of shapes in the eroded rock.

We rose at dawn the next day for the next leg: a quick drive down the strip in Las Vegas, then on to the Grand Canyon.  The cost of a room at the Grand Canyon was about three days' budget, so we drove on to Flagstaff after a quick sunset walk along the canyon's rim.  Uncertain about how the Thanksgiving holiday will affect services in El Paso, we got our Mexican car insurance in Flagstaff, before driving on to El Paso.  A random exit from the highway in Phoenix found us our first good meal since Portland.

But now I need to run off so we can cross the border.  The same photos I posted to the blog are also on picasaweb, except some there might have captions.  Ta ta for now!

Blowin' with the wind

The forecast this morning was for snow through the entire Sierra Nevada.  Our car has somewhat elderly "all season" tires, so we decided to skip the snowy mountain route via Reno and instead drove down the wet but not icy 99 to Bakersfield and along the 58 to Mojave.  Realized just past Bakersfield that we really should have filled up; the "empty" light had been on for about 18km when we reached Tehachapi, but we made it.  Heavy rain and fog from Tehachapi to Mojave, so we stopped there instead of continuing on to Ridgecrest or even Panamint Springs like we had planned.

The skies cleared somewhat after dinner, but the seeing was bad and there was a lot of ambient light, so I didn't drag out the scope.  cleardarksky.com is forecasting good observing conditions for Furnace Creek tomorrow night; I hope to set the scope up then under truly dark skies and see what it can do. 

Take a ride on the Redding

Spent the morning shopping in Portland.  Michelle needed new running shoes and Portland has no sales tax.  Of course we made the obligatory trip to Powell's.  I also picked up a spare battery for the camera, since the old battery seems to need charging rather too frequently.

We had breakfast and lunch at the Farmer's market.  The crepes at the Trout Lake market are much better, though the ones in Portland were OK.  The Portland market overall is much bigger than the Vancouver market, but not that different in terms of the range or quality of things on offer.

It seemed like half the city of Portland accompanied us down the I5 as far as Eugene, apparently to watch the Oregon Ducks play the USC Trojans.  It boggles the mind that so many people are willing to drive six hours (three there and three back home) to watch a college football game.  All the extra traffic added at least an hour to the trip.  Density waves in the traffic stream caused intermittent stop and go traffic along the entire trip.

We had supper in Medford, then hit the road again.  The weather had been relatively clear all day, but it started snowing almost as soon as we left Medford.  None of the snow stuck on the road, but driving through a snowstorm in the dark is hard work.  The forecast around Mount Shasta was for snow overnight and more snow tomorrow; we wanted to get past that section of highway today in case they close it tomorrow.  We made it, but it took an extra hour to get from Medford to Redding.  We rolled into town around 9:15pm and checked into the first hotel we found.  What with the rain, I won't get to try the new telescope out tonight.

Tomorrow we're heading down toward Death Valley.  We can't get to the park before dark, so we'll likely stop short of the park and drive through in the morning.  That's probably just as well, since accommodations in the park itself are very limited.  Still, it would have been nice to spend the night there and to get my telescope out: viewing conditions in Death Valley are supposed to be spectacular and there is no moon until the early morning hours tomorrow night.

Finally on the road

We made it safely to Portland. Worst part of the trip was at Main and 18th in Vancouver. It was snowing as we made our way out of town. Stopped for a traffic light with the front wheels in a bit of a trench. When the light turned green, I stepped on the gas pedal and nothing happened! I think the road was so icy that the ABS system kept the wheels from turning. I had to back up out of the trench, then was able to get the car to move forward.

It was sunny in Richmond.  The road was dry pretty much all the way to Tacoma.  We had some rain and fog after that, but mostly it was OK.  The forecast is for snow tomorrow, especially in the mountains.  Our current plan is to do some shopping in the morning, then stick to the I5 down to Redding.  From there we'll decide where to go next.

So I guess the "drive vs fly" question is settled: we'll be driving down to Portland tomorrow. The question of which telescope is coming along has also been settled: I purchased a new 120mm short tube refractor (600mm focal length) for the trip. I will miss the aperture of the dobs, but the smaller size and quicker setup time make the refractor a more practical choice. I also picked up a 35mm Panoptic eyepiece, which with the refractor gives a field of ~4.5 degrees at 17x magnification. Not bad. Viewing conditions here have been pretty crappy since I bought the scope, so I haven't been able to test it as much as I would like. My views of Jupiter were a bit disappointing, but I don't know whether that was due to the scope or the very poor seeing. The moon looked fabulous and I was pretty pleased with what I saw of the tip of Orion's sword and also zooming in on the Orion nebula and the Trapezium. We have a bit of shopping to do in Portland. We can't stay away from Powell's even though we won't have room for too many books. We're not sure yet what route we'll take from there; probably down through Reno toward Death Valley.

Cordelia in a sunbeam

We'll miss our little cat while we're away.