"And we're lost out here in the stars..."

So this morning we drove out to the Very Large Array National Radio Telescope, which is situated in a large plateau at about 7000 feet above sea level.



There was a little visitor center there with a short introductory film and some exhibits explaining the place and how it worked, and a walking tour that allowed you to get fairly close to one of the dishes. Each dish is about the size of a baseball diamond, and nearly 100 feet tall. They are set up on three radiating arms in a "Y" configuration. Each arm is 13 miles long, so when the scopes are all at their maximum spread, the array would cover the entire Washington DC metropolitan area, and then some (like as far as Fairfax!).






The arms are actually railways, and the dishes are moved around on them by special devices made for the purpose. We were lucky enough to be there when this was happening, and got to see one of these giant things trucking along at a brisk walking pace on its way to a new station along an arm. This hanger is used for maintenance and repair.






In the afternoon we went to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, a place mostly known for the enormous numbers of waterfowl and cranes that winter there. It is more quiet there in the summer, but we still saw a nice assortment of wildlife. While we were in the visitor center, I looked through the "recent sightings" book and noticed that someone had written down a coati ... I asked the woman working there about it and she said the people who had seen it seemed pretty certain that is what they saw, but it was very unusual for the park; they usually don't come that far north. Well, coati were something we were specifically looking for, so this was kind of interesting news, but didn't take it too seriously. However, not 1 mile down the road, Darrin spotted one in the rearview mirror, crossing the dirt road. We were so stunned (and he was moving so quickly) that I only had time to get the binoculars on him and say "yep!"; so no picture, unfortunately. But what a nifty animal!


Click me to see where we went. If you zoom in on the Very Large Array marker, you can see the giant "Y" shape made by the rails for the array. One of the arms stretches across the highway.