40 Million-Year-Old Cave Now a Plush Hotel

Kokopelli's cave in Farmington, NM.

Remote Controlled F-102

While visiting the White Sands Missile Range Museum, I learned that technicians flew a modified, remote-controlled version of the F-102 supersonic fighter from a specially equippped van.



I found the picture online here.

And here's the control panel that was used to fly it.

Nuclear Waste

We spotted several flatbed trucks during our trip carrying big gray containers. When we went to the Museum of Atomic History in Albuquerque we learned that they are for the transport of nuclear waste (if you look closely you can see the radiation symbol on the lower part of the containers). We thought that these might be going from Los Alamos to Yucca Mountain.

Space Age Picnic

At White Sands National Monument, there is a space age picnic area composed of corrigated aluminum covered picnic tables. Some have grills. Under one of these Melody and I sheltered from the wind and sun and ate dehydrated space ice cream and drank coke from a bottle.

Space Cola

At the Alamagordo Museum of Space History.

These containers were part of the so-called Carbonated Beverage Dispenser Evaluation, which, according to Wikipedia was "an experiment where both Coca-Cola and Pepsi tried to make their drinks available to astronauts. Both fizzed excessively in microgravity."

The cola dispensers were part of the cargo of a space shuttle mission in 1985. (Wikipedia)

Tarantulas

While we were viewing the Judd aluminum box installation, one of the guys on the tour pointed out this substantial spider keeping cool in the shadow of one of the boxes. The tour guide explained that it was tarantula season in Texas and that they were "on the move". That explained why the highway to Marfa was covered in crawling things I couldn't quite identify from the speeding car. We had another run-in with a tarantula while driving to New Mexico.




We pulled off to the side of Highway 17 to take in the scene when Melody spotted another tarantula hanging out on the shoulder. I walked over and snapped a picture. Soon after the spider begins to amble out onto the highway. There isn't a lot of traffic, but about every 30 seconds a car or truck goes flying by. We began to fear that our arachnid friend would get smashed right in front of our eyes. The spider took about five minutes to cross the highway. During that time there were about ten absurdly close calls where the spider nearly got smashed.



But he made it.

Flavin

Melody in the first Dan Flavin barracks at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX.

Prada Marfa

Melody and I were driving from El Paso to Marfa, Texas last week to see Donald Judd's aluminum boxes and Dan Flavin's flourescent lights. As we were cruising down highway 90, I was concentrating on not running over the tarantulas that were crawling all over the road so I wasn't paying attention to the featureless landscape on either side of the car. All of a sudden, Melody said, "I think we just passed a Prada store". I said I thought that was unlikely, but Melody said we should turn around and check it out. As I was doing a three point turn on the empty highway, Melody suggested that the Prada store might be some Art. She was right.

Philosophy Department Party

In the Smart Museum.

Grasshopper Taco

I had a grasshopper taco at Oyamel in D.C.