After hiking and posting yesterday, we relaxed at our camp site with Sue and Fletcher and enjoyed the beautiful weather and some wine. The weather here is a lot like Seattle....when the sun is out, it is nice and warm...the minute it goes behind a cloud...brrr...
As we mentioned earlier, Bryce Canyon is holding an Astronomy Festival. It starts today and continues through Sunday, concluding with the annular "ring of fire" solar eclipse. To mark the beginning of The festival, the park hosted a presentation at the Visitor Center entitled "Aliens Among Us", a title sure to entice campers from far and wide...including us.
As soon as we were seated and ready for the presentation to begin we got our first indication that this might go sideways on us. The young ranger (she even told us that she was young) giving the presentation started by asking if anyone had any questions or comments...?! Perhaps her last note card was on the top of the card stack. No question, a unique and provocative way to begin.
The presentation began with an interesting assortment of quotes, a smattering of Ufology and Roswell history, and a photo of the young ranger's cat. From there she tried to connect some very disparate and seemingly random thoughts including definitions of stars and the "Goldilocks Zone" -- made much more dramatic by an audience participation skit, some references to Avatar and bug eating plants, extremophiles that live at the bottom of the ocean and in the deserts of Chile, different kinds of light bulbs, bacteria found in our water heaters, and the challenges of leaving earth for another planet. The big finish was...wait for it...a request for us to love and protect the earth So, not exactly what we had anticipated in terms of content, and entertaining in parts due to the unexpected turns in subject matter, but we survived. Fletcher, however, found the science too overwhelming and left with 10 minutes remaining. At least we had the excitement of the telescopes awaiting us outside...50 telescopes scanning a black sky filled with millions of stars!
Well, OK, so there weren't 50 telescopes...maybe we misunderstood something in the hype...there were 5 actually, and they weren't ready yet because the sky was slightly cloudy and not completely dark. Clearly this was a sign...so we headed for the campsite and our beds. On the way to our campsites we were all wondering if there was any way to get that hour back... We all agreed, one of the worst presentations we have ever experienced, and therefore one we will all remember.
Shortly after laying down in bed we looked out the window and saw that the sky had cleared and we decided we had to take a peek outside. There have only been a few times in our life when we have been somewhere where the sky is truly dark. Bryce did not disappoint. The sky was amazing, so many stars, so many BRIGHT stars. If you have never seen the sky in a truly dark place you wouldn't believe how many stars are up there. When we were in Peru last year it was so dark that the stars looked like a white milky blanket in the sky. Bruce looked like a black velvet sky with LEDs of all sizes shining brightly all the way down to the horizon. Amazing....
Up bright and early today. Are we on vacation? Our body clocks are obviously still on that work morning wake up setting. Today we're heading out at 9:00 to hike the Fairyland Loop, which with our walk over there will total 10 miles or so.
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