McDonald Observatory The wind blew most of the night, cooling things off, but also making it hard to sleep. In the morning, as the sun rose, the winds calmed down. We packed up our trailer and headed west to Terlingua, which now is a ghost town, but was the major source of the mineral mercury in the U.S. (very important during World War II). Today it is best known for its International Chili cook-off. From there we headed through Big Bend Ranch State Park – here the terrain changed again to a grassy desert terrain with the Rio Grand running through. The road is a great road for motor bikes, but it presented some challenges for us, especially the 15% grade we climbed at one point on the road. We then headed to Fort Davis, a U.S. fort from about 1854 through 1891, primarily to protect the road from San Antonio to El Paso, Texas. They’ve done a good job of restoring many of the building here, especially some of the barracks and officer’s quarters. They are in the midst of restoring the hospital. We camped a short distance away at Davis Mountain State Park – a tiny state park, which mostly is a very nice campground. The highlight of the day was going to the “star party” at the McDonald Observatory (sponsor of NPR’s Stardate program). They pointed out all the primary constellations in the sky with a laser pointer and then we got a chance to observe the sky through a series of telescopes. We observed the 7 sisters in Pleiades, the M-3 Star cluster, the craters of the moon (it was almost a full moon) and the hit – Saturn with 4 of its moons.
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