Inbound from Big Bend, Outbound to WorldCon!

I'm recovering from our family vacation to Big Bend National Park. 

On the way out, we stayed outside of Ft Davis, so that we could go to the McDonald Observatory's Star Party (definitely worth a stop if you're in West Texas). Our cabin was right next to one of the dish antennas that are part of the Very Long Baseline Array. The VLBA is a single radio telescope made up of ten separate antennas spread across the United States from St. Croix to Mauna Kea. It was huge and moved around a lot.

We saw three bear cubs and their mama. The cubs ran out of a tree that was ahead of us on the trail, then ran back up into the tree, then out again. All I could think was, where's mama? (First rule of bear country, don't get in between a bear cub and its mama.) Eventually the mama bear came out of the tree too! It was not a large tree, and we were all surprised that she was up in it. I didn't think to get my camera out until we were sure there wasn't going to be any kind of confrontation, so here is my picture of mama bear's butt as she ambles away from us.

We went for a horseback ride in the desert and saw some Comanche  pictographs.

A fox came by our cabin every night. He looks a little sad because all we did was take pictures of him and didn't give him any treats. 

I'm heading to WorldCon on Thursday morning. It will be my first big con, and it's wonderful that it's right in my back yard. I'm going for the whole weekend and am looking forward to all the festivities. I will also be attending a writer's workshop on Saturday. I'll post some short, newsy blogs whenever I get a chance over the con weekend.