Two more parks.

We drove straight to Colorado on the way north, about a 15-hour drive, and stayed with Julie in Denver for a night. Then we headed to Gene and Jo’s for two nights. We made a side trip to Estes Park as well. The family get-together was very special.

On the way back south we had another nice visit with Julie.

Dinner and desserts with Julie in Denver.

Then we broke up the long trip home into a couple of days including stops at two national parks.

Great Sand Dunes National Park – snow on the dunes
White Sands National Park – a truly unique place

We stayed in Ft. Davis for a night with a reservation to attend one of the McDonald Observatory’s star parties. The skies were not cooperative for viewing at the observatory, but we had fun.

McDonald Observatory socked in with clouds.

We left Ft Davis on Wednesday well before dawn, and on the drive up to I-10, I noticed that the clouds parted, opening up a clear, starry sky. So we pulled over in the middle of pitch-dark range land with coyotes howling all around and enjoyed a full-sky view of the Milky Way.

We enjoyed the view for a few minutes and then resumed our drive. A few minutes later the skies were filled in with thick clouds again. It was a treat to get that brief moment of star gazing.

A successful road trip, but it’s always nice to get back home.

Watching from afar.

We witnessed two momentous events over the weekend, each from many miles away.

We watched a livestream of the wedding of my nephew and his lovely new wife.

When you can’t be there in person…

And we witnessed the rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the night sky. These 2 largest planets have not been this close since 1623, during Galileo’s lifetime. And they won’t be closer during my lifetime. To the naked eye, they appear to be a single point of light. We looked at the two planets through binoculars in the backyard. We also watched a livestream from the McDonald Observatory in west Texas, through their large telescopes. One could see the rings of Saturn, and several of Jupiter’s moons.

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