Fort Davis

It's only a couple of degrees cooler a mile high in the Davis Mountains, but it's a blissful difference and we slept without aircon for the first time in weeks.

After a hearty breakfast of pancakes (from a packet - sorry mum!) we set off up the next door mountain. From the scenic lookout we had an incredible view over the plains and the ridge fencing them in. I felt like I was back in the wild west looking out for indians advancing in the distance.

A couple more small peaks and we arrived at Fort Davis, one of the pioneer outposts protecting the gold trail running west and keeping those pesky indian/mexicans from complaining about stealing their ancestoral lands. It was an interesting little place to explore for an hour or so but the highlight of the afternoon was the massive ice cream!

As we were looking to set off back home there was a pretty ominous crack of thunder but fortunately it held off until we were safely back in camp. I think that's the first rain for many weeks, and it only lasted half an hour or so.

For the evening we headed further up the mountain to the McDonald Observatory where first went to a lecture about how the planets orbit the sun all on the same plane & why the 12 (well actually 13!) zodiac constellations are picked out from the 88 named constellations. We then headed out for the star party where they set up telescopes and we saw Saturn (including rings & 4 moons), Jupiter, Mars, a spiral galaxy 25 million lights years away plus many others. We even saw the hubble telescope pass over head!Read more