Happy Birthday, Mom!

Author: Hyde K.

First of all, I wanted to start off by giving a big thank you to my mom. Out of all the dates on the spreadsheet put in front of me on the first day of SSP, the only one that stood out to me was today, July 11th, since it is my mom’s birthday. While I can’t spend today with her, I thought the least I could do was dedicate this blog post to her. Happy birthday Mom, thank you for everything!

Anywho, I may have been lucky enough to have chosen the most eventful day of SSP this year. Today’s a field trip, and a busy one at that, with us going to Sunspot, Apache Point Observatory, White Sands, and best of all, Wendy’s. 

Shortly after waking up, I hit the wonderful NMSU dining hall in search of my favorite breakfast burrito. Once I realized I was supposed to be on the bus in approximately one minute, I hastily scurried to the bus and was somehow the first one on. 

One nap later and I found myself looking at the alpine scenery as we ascended the Sacramento Mountains (New Mexico isn’t just desert?!). First, we went to Sunspot, which I came to find out is one of the top 5 solar observatories in the world. Inside, we met this really cool solar astronomer named Shawn, who was trying to multitask downloading terabytes of solar images and keeping high school students from crushing their hands in the rotating floor. Besides harassing the PhD, I looked at some sick live footage of a giant sunspot. We were quickly ushered out of the observatory back to the gift shop/bus for lunch (Isbaah’s a real one). 

After that, we got to tour the 3.5 meter telescope first, which was pretty much like touring a giant, expensive garage. On that tour and the tour of the smaller telescopes we also got to enjoy the incredible view from the mountains of White Sands, Las Cruces, and, yes, even El Paso. 

Then we made our way back to the bus to go to Walmart and Wendy’s, where I indulged in the meal of champions: a Jr. Deluxe with no patty. Note: beware the sink in the Wendy’s men’s room. 

From there we went to the White Sands, shortly stopping at the gift store first where I spent most of my time in the kids room. 

Getting off the bus in White Sands was surreal, being surrounded in all directions by a sea of pearly dunes. I don’t consider myself a very good writer, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

After watching the sunset at White Sands, I got to watch a thunderstorm roll across the desert while we returned to NMSU.

About me:

Yo, I’m Hyde and I’m from St. Augustine, Florida! Outside of school, I love to surf and skimboard, enjoy quality time with my girlfriend Heidi (yes I’m taken, ladies), and wallow in the solitude of my own bedroom (sorry Tony). At SSP you can catch me sitting on that one filing cabinet in the Bio Annex procrastinating on doing my centroiding code.