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Very Large Array- 25 August 2003 After visiting the Bosque Wildlife Refuge I headed back to Socorro and then through a very small town called Magdalena and finally arrived at the VLA, while listening to Piazolla and "Death of the Angel" If you've ever seen the movie "Contact" you've seen the VLA. It really stretches out for a long ways and one certainly feels fairly small standing next to one of the radio telescopes. |
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After departing from the VLA it started raining a little but it didn't last too long. I stopped
back in Socorro for a late breakfast/early lunch at
Martha's Black Dog Coffee house
which obviously served coffee and a number of vegetarian meals. It was good. Then on to Albuquerque
with Hank Williams on the CD player.
I arrived in Albuquerque with plenty of time before my flight so I tried to go to the Rio
Grande Botanical Gardens. Due to not properly following Patty's directions and poor signs put up by
the city of Albuquerque I wound up at the Zoo. I think it is a small zoo. I didn't go in. I decided
to look for a pay phone since my cell phone still wasn't working. The zoo didn't have a pay phone
at the entrance but they allowed me to use a "public" phone in their office. It took me half an
hour of waiting and talking to AT&T Wireless for them to finally decide there was something
wrong with my phone and they would send me a new one. It didn't help much on this trip.
I then tried to locate the Botanical Gardens and did indeed find it. They have one fee for
both their Aquarium, which is fairly small, and the gardens. Again they have poor signs to tell you
where each is. Also over 90% of the plants had no tags indicating what the plants were. It was a
fairly nice botanical gardens although much smaller than the gardens in San Francisco. I enjoyed it.
Then on to the airport and home.
Some links for the Very Large Array and the Rio Grande Botanic Garden and Aquarium
