Now that we are home I’m going to get caught up on the picture review side of things and keep on Sarah to finish up her restaurant reviews.
Day 6 started very very early .. 4:30 am Vegas time (7:30 am in my home time zone). That was by far the earliest we had stumbled out of bed the last week. Thank goodness for the time zone changes or it would have been not a happy time. We said good bye to our upgrade suite and lamented for a moment that we didn’t have enough time to really enjoy the upgrade. Easy come easy go.
Our first stop was probably the most important of the day .. to load up on donuts from Ronalds. To help the decision process along, we ordered one of each of everything that Sarah could eat .. and a chocolate covered glazed for me.
Not a bad haul .. i was only allowed one donut out of the batch.
The California border wasn’t a far drive from Vegas:
And once you get into California the first real town is Baker, which has the worlds tallest thermometer. The thermometer is 134 feet tall in honor of the highest recorded temperature in North America (which was in nearby Death Valley).
Also in Baker is the ‘Mad Greek’ where we stopped for breakfast:
Sarah enjoyed a falafel sandwich and I the Denver omelet
Continuing on to our appointment at the NASA Goldstone facility .. its pretty much straight desert:
The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex is located at Fort Irwin which is the National Training Center where army units do full simulated as close as you can get to real combat training. We were greeted with a Blackhawk fly-over:
One of the more interesting things, along the drive in, were the rocks painted with the logos of the units that had rotated through the training facility:
Another thing you don’t see every day is Tank Crossing warning signs:
Its probably hard to see in the picture but just in front of the vehicle in this picture, a concrete strip had been put in place to keep the tanks that do cross from ripping up the asphalt.
After 3 hours of driving, and a heck of a long entrance road into the base, our destination approaches:
The first radio antennas that we spot:
A picture of our tour group. The person on the left, in a red shirt and jeans, is Karla Warner who would be our guide
The first antenna we see, ECHO, is the oldest at Goldstone and is decommissioned to active NASA use. When it was decommissioned it was donated to a school and now is actively used by students around the world to do actual research as part of the GAVRT project. You can read more about that Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope. Pretty fascinating stuff
After a short history lesson we head out to the cars to drive to a couple of the antenna arrays:
Along the way we see that the folks at Goldstone have had some fun in the desert:
We come up to the Apollo valley set of antennas
Karla explained that the antennas are set vertical (pointing straight up) when they are not active and at 90 degrees when undergoing maintenance so in the above picture the right most one is not active, the middle one is presumably doing something and the left one was being worked on. These antennas had their electronics in a 2 story bunker below the antennas. You can see the entrance in this picture:
We pile into the cars and head out .. just as we leave the antenna being worked on shows some life and rotates up!
Sharks in the desert .. who knew!
After a (i think) 15 mile drive we come upon the grand daddy of the antennas, the Mars antenna.
This antenna is 230 foot across and weighs 6 million lbs. Wow!
I didn’t get a very good shot but this station, according to the schedule posted in the command center, is talking to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in orbit around Mars. Pretty cool stuff
That concluded our tour. Karla was a great guide and a very enthusiastic NASA representative. We really enjoyed ourselves .. so much so that we forgot to get out the thermometer and show off the temperature. Its was hot. Deserts are like that i hear 
We left the base and headed down to Temecula which is halfway between San Diego and Los Angles to meet up with our friends Brett and Wendy. We got there in the early evening and kicked back and relaxed a little. Here Wendy and Sarah take a look at the photos we had taken.
landshark