At the Opera with Broch and Stefano
Intermission at Hansel and Gretel. Outside the Long Center in Austin. What a beautiful day.
Dave, Jen and Broch
Follow the Journey
UT Baseball
Scout day at UT baseball stadium Took this picture just as we hit a homer with bases loaded :-) Hook 'em.
Agate Hunting at Woodward Ranch
On a rainy day, we stopped in the local rock shop. The woman at the counter told us about Woodwad Ranch in Alpine: It is open to the public for rock hunting. After lunch in our cottage we headed out. The rock shop at Woodward was amazing in itself. Jan, the proprietress showed us what we would be looking for and how to identify what we'd likely find. Then she sent us off with 3 tin buckets and a map. A golden horse that we called Butterscotch followed us all the way to the gate. We spent a couplle hours scouring the hillsides and found a number of pretty good samples!
Pioneer cemetery
Monday morning we stopped at the Pioneer Cemetery to make grave rubbings. The first plot we encountered: Dietrich "DutchAllOver" Dutchover. Amazingly, he was an ancestor of our wrangler from the day before.
The Caboose in Ft. Davis
After dinner we stopped for a treat at an ice cream parlor set up in a retired caboose.
Trial Ride at Prude Ranch
As we were getting ready to saddle up, we recognized the other family with us: Kelly Willis, Bruce Robison and their kids. You just can't get very far away from the Austin music scene.
One of our wranglers turned out to be a history major and spent half the ride telling me about his family history. His 2nd great grand father came from Antwerp, Beligium. After making his way to North America, he was recruited into the army during the war with Mexico. He still didn't speak a word of English, so as the recruiters tried to get his name the most they could discern was that he was "DutchAllOver". So that became the family name (he later dropped the "all" to make it Dutchover).
Truck stop #1
Broch, Stefano and I stopped for a pit stop in Junction, Texas onn our way out to McDonald Observatory. Only about 4 1/2 more hours to go.
Sonora, TX
A highway rest stop between Sonora and Ozona helps burn off some energy.
Hobby-Eberly Telescope
Now the modern big-boy. Great visitor center with videos and displays and a window into the working area of the telescope.
Broch Moves the Dome
We are inside the dome of the Harlon 107-inch telescope. All the kids on our tour got to work some of the controls. This thing was the 3rd largest telescope in the world in when it was built in the 60s.
