johnboystravelblog

June 3, 2017

After visiting the National Weather Center down in Norman and the OKC Memorial downtown I went to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for a while (some pictures in a post below, although this trip was pre-blog so I didn’t take as many pictures as I often do).  Next stop on this busy day was the Myriad Botanical Garden, a 17 acre oasis in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  Here are some of the things I saw there:

The photo above is the middle portion of a very tall “Zombie Palm”

June 3, 2017

Here are more of the things I saw at the Myriad Botanical Garden, a 17 acre oasis in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

My, what a cute little blue frog….

Oh!…..

June 2, 2017

The next stop on my first full day in OKC was the site of the former Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, located in the heart of downtown.

This was the location of a domestic terrorist attack on April 19, 1995 when two men blew the front off the 9-story federal office building using a powerful bomb.

Although the bombing occurred more than 22 years before I was there, there are still numerous items placed at the site by family members and others who will never forget what happened that day.

The memorial itself is located in the footprint of where that building once stood.

A chair, each representing one of the 168 people killed in the initial explosion (or the resulting collapse of the front portion of the building).  The chairs are aligned in 9 rows, representing the floor on which each person was thought to be at the time of the explosion, 9:02 am local time.

At one end of the reflecting pond is a black structure containing only the time – 9:01, the minute before the explosion.

At the other end, a similar structure with 9:03, the minute after.

I am normally not a very emotional person and I was doing fairly well until I saw this:

One of the shorter chairs, one for each of the 19 children who died in the attack, each with a teddy bear strapped to it.  Most of the children were at a day care center located in the building.

A powerful message (and I’m tearing up again as I post this).

The clear “box” under each chair is lit up at night.

 

June 3, 2017

(Photo credit: ontheworldmap.com)

My first stop on my first full day in the Oklahoma City area was to travel south, about 20 miles, to the town of Norman (at the bottom of the map above).  Here I would visit the National Weather Center.

 

Surprise, surprise – I am a total Weather Channel geek (although I can’t receive it under my current media configuration at home).  While TWC is located in Atlanta, they often reference the “Storm Prediction Center” at the National Weather Center here in Norman.

The National Weather Center, located on the campus of University of Oklahoma, is a joint effort between them, the National Weather Service and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

I couldn’t take a tour (I believe they only do them on certain days, plus I hadn’t signed up in advance and “walk-in” tours are not permitted) but Security did let me inside the building, restricting my access to a common area on the ground floor.  I was here on a Saturday and most of the staff wouldn’t be working, plus there was an art exhibit which I could walk through.

I did see these examples of tornado monitoring devices:

And I chuckled to myself when I saw the name of the coffee shop, located on the ground floor:

The name is reference to the movie “Twister”.  And I swear to God this is true – when I got back to my Airbnb that night “Twister” was showing on one of the cable channels I could receive!  I caught it just in time to see the “flying cow” scene.

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction….

 

 

 

June 2, 2017

Today was another travel day, even longer than the day before.  After my one night stopover in Lubbock I set out for my next stay, 3 nights in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  MapQuest said it could be a trip of about 6 hours covering 380 miles but I took more of a zig-zag route, largely on slower, scenic roads, and I put a total of 605 miles on the car for the day.

Oklahoma City is pretty much right in the middle of the state (if you don’t include the panhandle):

(Photo credit: mapsofworld.com)

I embarked from Lubbock, in the lower left hand corner of the photo above – about where the word Copyright is.  I drove east and then north on a series of scenic roads which were already on my itinerary but were also recommended by my Airbnb host in Lubbock.  I picked up Interstate 40 east of Amarillo, TX and drove east as far as Elk City, OK (on the map above).

I stopped briefly at the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City, then drove south on scenic roads towards Altus and east towards Lawton.  Before I got to Lawton I drive through a National Wildlife Reserve and saw these characters:

Turns out that wouldn’t be the only warning sign I’d see.  Shortly after exiting the Wildlife Reserve and before getting to Lawton I passed by Fort Sill military base.  A friend back home in Durham had warned me I might see a sign like this:

(Photo credit: army.mil)

I didn’t stop to take a picture of the actual sign I saw but I did take the proactive step of closing my sunroof!

When I got to Lawton I headed north again on more small roads and approached Oklahoma City near where I’d be staying at an Airbnb on the southwest side of town.

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I’m going to skip ahead to something I did the next day.  Among the many things I did while in Oklahoma City was visit the Oklahoma City Museum of Art downtown.  There was a large Dale Chihuly exhibit there (apparently part of their permanent collection as it is still there).  I have posted pictures of Mr. Chihuly’s work before but do want to post just a few here:

This is the Eleanor Blake Kirkpatrick Memorial Tower, located in the atrium inside the museum entrance.  It rises 55 feet, contains 2,100 pieces of glass, weighs 10 tons and is lit up at night:

And here are two other works, a little different from what I have posted previously:

The photo above is of a chandelier, photographed from the balcony on the next floor.

And finally a shot of a modern building downtown, taken from the rooftop patio at the museum.

June 1, 2017

Today was a travel day as I drove over 200 miles from Carlsbad, New Mexico northeast to Lubbock, Texas.  Lubbock was chosen as a one-night stopping point because I had some chores to do once I got there (having the tires on the car rotated, doing laundry, etc.) and I was going to have a much longer drive the following day as I moved on to Oklahoma City so I wanted to rest up a bit.

I did find something fun to do while I was in town.  I visited this museum, the largest one in the world dedicated to windmills.  This beautiful facility has over 160 windmills, 60 outdoors and the remainder inside a new building.

May 31 & June 1, 2017

After leaving the underground portion of Carlsbad Caverns I drove around some of the scenic surface roads in the National Park there and then went back to the Visitor Center to study many of the indoor displays there.

I then headed out to the main road and continued about 40 miles further south to see a  National Park I have not been to yet.  This meant crossing back into the state of Texas from where I had been in southeast New Mexico.

I hadn’t noticed when I first entered Texas almost three weeks earlier that the entry signs welcoming you to the state were rather puny:

When I crossed from Louisiana into Texas I did so by crossing a river on a bridge, so I really didn’t notice a sign indicating I was then in the Lone Star State.  The photo above is of the sign I saw when I crossed back into Texas from New Mexico.  Evidently the people who made this rather nice sign out of stone didn’t get the “everything’s bigger in Texas” memo…   More on that later.

I continued south and stopped at the Visitor Center for the Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  I learned there that there are no roads in the Park and that the only ways to access the Park’s rugged peaks is by hiking in on foot or riding on horseback.  Not for me…

The weather had become rather threatening anyway so I stayed in the Visitor Center for a while to wait for the heavy rain which soon arrived to pass.

I drove around a little more before heading back to Carlsbad.

While I was going through pictures for this post I discovered a few I had taken of a rest area in another part of Texas which I had seen about a week earlier (obviously on a much nicer day):

Since they were in Texas I figured I’d include them in this post.

I headed back to Carlsbad for dinner (tacos at a highly recommended food truck) and went back to my Airbnb to monitor the weather radar.  I decided against returning to Carlsbad Caverns for the nightly bat exodus which, as it turns out, was cancelled for that evening anyway.

The next day I headed northeast from Carlsbad to travel to the Texas panhandle and the town of Lubbock, where I would be spending one night.  This meant crossing into Texas one more time, and another small, stone sign:

Before getting to the Texas state line I  had driven through the town of Hobbs, New Mexico.  They are not at all shy about welcoming people to their little slice of the world:

To demonstrate how large those letters are, that’s my car parked off to the left.

OK, Texas, it seems that Hobbs has thrown down the gauntlet.  Looks like you have your work cut out for you….

May 31, 2017

After having traveled east from Las Cruces through the towns of Ruidoso and Roswell I spent the first of two nights in the town of Carlsbad, in southeast New Mexico.  Today I was going to devote the majority of the day to visiting Carlsbad Caverns National Park, about 20 miles southwest of town.  My older brother was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and as long as I can remember I have wanted to visit Carlsbad Caverns.

 

(Photo credit: wiki-travel.com)

Carlsbad Caverns National Park covers about 73 square miles (above ground).  The elevation is listed as 3,599 feet above sea level, although that number ranges from 3,596 to 6,368 within the Park.  The town of Carlsbad is at 3,295 feet elevation.

On the road in to the Park from the main highway it was apparent that I was gaining altitude.  As you can see, the vantage point from which I took these photos is higher than the road I came in on.

The Visitor Center is located at 4,406 feet elevation.

While there are other things to see and do on the property, most people come here for the namesake cave – Carlsbad cavern.  There are over 110 caves in the Park but only three are open to the public.  Carlsbad, covering 8.2 acres, is by far the largest.

From the Visitor Center the way most people descend to the cavern is through the cleverly named Natural Entrance.  In front of that entrance is an amphitheater:

Two things happen here.  For most of the day when the Park is open a ranger speaks to groups of people who are about to descend into the cavern (not in all the seats, mind you – only small groups).  Basic rules are explained (don’t run, use your indoor voice, don’t bother the bats, etc).  One extremely useful piece of advice was to put our cell phones in Airplane mode.  She explained that if you don’t do that you will probably exhaust your battery as your phone searches frantically for a cell signal (which it won’t find underground).  Although there were lots of cars in the parking lot everyone had plenty of room to scatter out so I never felt crowded at all.

Oh, did I mention the bats?  The other use for the amphitheater seats (which many times probably does fill them all) is the nightly ritual of thousands of bats exiting the cavern in search of food.  Thousands and thousands of Mexican freetail bats call the cavern home.  Each night a single bat can consume up to half it’s body weight in insects.  Since I missed the “bat show” when I was in Austin earlier this in trip I seriously considered coming back in the evening but strong thunderstorms were forecast to develop in the afternoon (they did – not a bad day to be underground) and there was a possibility they would cancel the event for safety (they did).

OK.  Before I take the plunge let me show you what I’m in for:

(Photo credit: carlsbadnewmexico.com)

The photo above is on a postcard sold in the Visitor Center.  From the Natural Entrance one must descend approximately 750 feet to get to the cavern floor.  Don’t be misled by the image above – once you’re down there it is fairly level.  Note that the gold color band is about 800 feet down but the lines follow the contour of the surface.  The far end of the “Big Room” is closer to 600 feet down than 800.

At the right side of the photo is a depiction of the Seattle Space Needle which is about 600 feet tall.  The bulk of the cavern is further underground than that.

There is a paved pathway the entire length of the cavern which dictates where you may go.  There are sturdy metal handrails most places (both to hold on to and to keep people from straying off the path).  Many of the formations are lit up and although the lighting is generally dim I had no feelings of claustrophobia or being in an extremely dark place.  Most of the cavern is wheelchair accessible and there are emergency call stations located throughout the cavern to summon help in a medical emergency.

Once the small groups are “released” by the ranger at the entrance everyone is on their own.  The cavern tour is “self-guided” and you may take as little or as much time as you like during business hours.

I believe the entire length of the path is about a mile and a quarter, including the descent.  A great feature (especially for me) is that there is an elevator to take you back up to the Visitor Center (believe me, I didn’t mind going down but there was no way I was going to climb back up 750 feet, the height of a 75-story building!).  Those with problems walking or in wheelchairs may also ride the elevator down.

OK – let’s do it:

There is a steep series of switchbacks which take you down in to the cavern.

One last look up at “daylight”.  Not too late to turn back….

I proceeded down and spent a total of about 4 1/2 hours in the cavern.  As I will explain in the next post, my photos are terrible.  Many formations are lit up and although using a “flash” is allowed they ask that everyone be mindful of others and not get “flash happy”.  I tried using my flash once or twice but found that it made things worse.  I had all day and just took my time, stopping frequently to put my phone/camera away and just look with my own eyes.   I actually try to do that everywhere I go.   Believe me – this place is incredible and it was nice to just take a break and stand and stare…..

When I got back up to the Visitor Center I saw a, presumably scale, model of the cavern.  You can clearly see the steep descent at the entrance, the elevator shaft, and I took two photos showing much of the “Big Room,” the main chamber.  My photos might make it appear that everything is right in front of you but you are often in huge “rooms” with high ceilings and many formations are off in the distance.  The Big Room is 4,000′ long and 625′ wide.  At it’s highest point the ceiling is 255′ high.

Carlsbad Caverns is truly amazing and is among the highlights of my recent trips.

 

May 31, 2017

This post contains photographs I took while visiting Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southeast New Mexico.

(Photo credit: wiki-travel.com)

I arrived in the town of Carlsbad the night before, after having visited Ruidoso and Roswell on my way east from Las Cruces, NM.  The Caverns are about 20 miles southwest of the town of Carlsbad.

This post contains photos I took the day I was there.  While I took well over 200 pictures I was extremely disappointed to discover that most of them are not blog-worthy.  In fact, they are terrible!  While the formations I was photographing were clear on my smartphone’s screen evidently a combination of low-light and the slightest movement of the camera as I triggered the shutter was just enough to result in about 200 blurry pictures.  Here are a few that came out reasonably well.  As I mentioned in Post 1, I am so glad that I took lots of time to go through the Cavern and that I periodically put my camera away and just looked at my surroundings.  At least now when I look at my blurry photos I am at least reminded of the things I saw with my own eyes which my mind can recall more clearly.

Post 1 of 2 (above) will explain a little bit about where I am and exactly what you are seeing.

In the photo above, the formation on the right, named Giant Dome, is what’s known as a column.  The formations on the left, named Twin Domes, are stalagmites (pronounced sta-LAG-mites).  A stalagmite is a generally cylindrical cone which rises from the floor of a cave.  A stalactite, on the other hand, is a similar shape which descends from the ceiling of a cave.  A column is formed if and when the two meet.  The way I was taught as a kid to tell the difference between a -mite and a -tite was that a stalactite (which hangs down) has to “hold on tight”.

Below is a pool of crystal clear water, one of several I saw:

To see much better photographs you should check out the National Park Service website.  Go to nps.gov/cave then click on “Learn About the Park” then click on “Photos”.  That logic applies to every National Park in the US National Park system (just change the “cave” portion of the url to the name of the desired Park).

Here is a quote from the NPS website regarding Carlsbad Caverns:

“Photos can never fully capture the grandeur of the Big Room, it’s a place you need to see to believe!”

Amen to that!!  Everything that Roswell wasn’t was more than made up for by the magnificence of Carlsbad Caverns.   I highly recommend a visit in person.

 

May 30, 2017

After I determined that the UFO-related venues in Roswell were somewhat of a bust I was very pleased to find somewhere else to spend some of my afternoon in town – the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art.  Here are some of the things I saw there:

First, an example of kinetic art.  Imagine the 3-D canvas which, rather than being flat, is comprised by a full-length series of the letter W sticking out at you across the entire width.  I wasn’t very good about taking photos of the little “card” next to the art pieces which credit the artist and explain what the item is called and constructed of.  One famous artist whose work contains many, many examples of this style is Yaacov Agam who, as I write this, is still living.  If you ever get a chance to see his work in person, do so!

In this work, when you view it from the left side you see mainly blue lines with smaller white spaces:

From the right you see mainly white with smaller areas of blue:

When viewed head-on you see a mixture of the two.

AND you now see what appears to be three dimensional blocks, suspended in space.  Also, look at the shadow at the bottom to see what I was referring to with the “W””s.

Now, imagine that concept with colors, shapes or pictures and you’ll see examples of Agam’s work.

Here are some three-dimensional wooden shapes which fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and are contained within a cradle (the first two) or a frame:

Here is an image created by making cigarette burns in a piece of paper:

And finally, this colorful and shapely mask which is ceramic:

Artists are very clever!