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Sat. July 10, 1999
Desert Museum day
I woke up today about 11:30am AST (Astronomer Standard Time) and headed over to the cafeteria for a healthy breakfast. My whopping bowl of Cheerios was sure to get me through the day. We all headed down the mountain to take in the wonders of the Ariona - Sonora Desert Museum. When we turned off the highway toward the national monument, there were signs warning of a dipping road. What I wasn't prepared for was a rolling path that was like driving a golf cart on a bumpy minature golf course. It was a great road that I wish I'd got a picture of. Up and down I can handle.
The museum is mostly an outdoor experience featuring the plants and animals that call that region home. With a great monsoon threatening the skies overhead, we wandered through various cactus gardens and aviaries. One thing I'd never before seen in person was a raven. My gosh, now I know why Poe could write such a tale! It was a huge black beast that would probably stand knee high to any average-sized man. It was a really spectacular sight. It, along with many other animals, didn't really look happy though. From hawks to desert cats, I don't think adequit facilities exist at the Desert Museum to truly make the animals feel confortable. I could also be misrepresenting the situation. I did overhear that many of the animals at the museum were injured or misplaced and were brought in to be rehabilitated. I hope that's the truth. It is a beautiful place that could be a powerful tool to preserve local wildlife.
For dinner I had a great tomato, basil, and mushroom soup. The blend was prepared by one of the Kitt Peak cooks (whom Jason L. believes is an alien sent to observe) who to me looks and speaks like the man who played Ken (the blind SETIer) in Contact. Anyway, I don't eat soup other than top ramen often and this was a great way to diverge from my nutritional norm. After dinner, we swapped out our ST-4 camera for the slightly newer and higher resolution ST-6. We did so because we're using the cameras in the eyepiece of our spectrascope to see if the object we're trying to view is within a very small slit. The ST-4 seemed to be too weak at detecting faint objects which is why we decided to swap it for the ST-6. Unfortunately, our experiment never had a chance to prove its worth for no clear skies came that night.
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