The Spirit of Adventure 2.0

Waco Texas to Galveston Texas is a big state with lots of miles in between our stops. After leaving Roswell NM we had two full days of driving to get to our first destination, Waco, Texas. We learned that the Chisholm Trail came through this part of Texas The Chisholm Trail was a trail used in the post-Civil War era to drive cattle overland from  ranches in Texas to Kansas railheads. Cattle were driven along the trail and brought across the Brazos River over this toll bridge in Waco https://wacohistory.org/items/show/24 We also visited the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame Museum And then we had to see the newest tourist attraction in Waco The Silos at Magnolia Market.... created by Chip and Joanna Gaines of HGTV Fixer Upper Fame! What was once an old 20,000 sq. ft. barn and a couple of cotton seed grain silos in the  old downtown was transformed in 2015 into the Silos at Magnolia Market With more than 30,000 visitors a

The Very Large Array and Roswell NM The Very Large Array, one of the world's premier astronomical radio observatories, consists of 27 large radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin,  fifty miles west of Socorro New Mexico.  ( that's about 25 miles past the middle of nowhere ) The antennas are distributed along the three arms of railroad track, shaped in a Y configuration, (each of which measures 13 miles from the center of the Y (configuration A). In the photo above the dishes are in configuration D which places them stretching only .4 miles  from the center of the Y.  Using the rail tracks that follow each of these arms—and that, at one point, intersect with U.S. Route 60 at a level crossing—and a specially designed lifting locomotive, the antennas can be physically relocated to a number of prepared positions Each of the antennas is 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. The data from the antennas is combined el