Fort Davis, Texas May 15 – May 17, 2024
Wow – is this the middle of nowhere!. Actually, I think this is a 100 miles from the middle of nowhere! Fort Davis is located up Davis Mountain about 40 miles from Interstate 10 in West Texas. Our attraction was to visit the McDonald Observatory and The National Historic Site of Fort Davis.
We had a great site at Davis Mountain State Park and Ziva enjoyed investigating.
Fort Davis was a key post in the defense system of west Texas. Fort Davis was one of several forts along the trail that protected travelers from San Antonio – El Paso Road. The Fort Davis National historic Site is one of the best examples of a frontier military post. The visitors center had a short film narrated by Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Unfortunately, he spoke very quickly and the audio was not in sync with the video. The fort is partially restored and the parts that are restored are fantastic. I really enjoyed our visit.
Because we were in the middle of nowhere, we spent quite a bit of time at the local library to make phone calls and use the internet. Upon the recommendation of the librarian, we visited the botanical garden. The Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Garden was just what you might expect for a botanical garden in the desert. But it was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours in the middle of nowhere.
The highlight of our trip was the McDonald Observatory. The Observatory boasts the largest telescope in North America. We toured the small museum in the visitor’s center and went on a two hour guided tour of the facilities including the two largest telescopes at the facility. The best part of our tour was the nighttime sky party where we were entertained by a talk on the constellations and then viewed the moon and various stars from different telescopes. This was awesome!
Next our travels take us into New Mexico.
“Sky Full of Stars” by Coldplay