13/03/2016 Sunday
We set off on an approximately 800 mile round trip from San Antonio to Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and return. The party consisted on Andy, Mary Lyn and AJ Hill, Matt Fuller, Richard and Yvonne Naylor travelling in two cars. With tempertures in the 80s F (27C) it was good to have air-conditioning in the cars.
Before we left San Antonio we got caught in a traffic jam caused by weekend road works and aggravated by the fact that many people were travelling at the end of the school/college mid-term break. Our first stop was in Houston at the home of St Philip’s College Principal Adena Loston. She had, very kindly, invited us to have dinner with her on the way through. We spent a couple of hours hearing about her many years experience in the Texas education system, her time at NASA and swapping stories about our own experiences in N.I. Thank you Adena.
We eventually got to the home of Andy’s dad, also called Andy, and his wife Marilyn. We were given a very warm welcome but were glad to collapse into comfortable beds.
14/03/2016 Monday
Next morning I had a very interesting conversation about the oil industry and fracking in Texas with Andy (senior) who was very much involved in the industry. He was positive about fracking and felt that the issues raised about its harmful effects had been largely addressed. He also commented on the effects that the oil price drop had had in Texas and US in general. The number of rigs drilling for oil and gas had dropped nearly 70% in the last two years. On our road trip we saw a lot of oil and gas sites which consisted of small installation of pipes coming out of the ground. These were often accompanied by three or four storage tanks about 50 m away from the pipes. Evidently most of the disruption and noise occurs during the drilling phase after which the installation is visited periodically by tankers to collect the oil and gas. The most obvious difference between Texas and UK/Ireland is that Texas is flat, large and sparsely populated outside the urban sprawl. This makes access to and development of sites relatively straightforward. We did see some nodding donkeys but these are used mainly to pump oil from shallow wells. Most of the oil/gas fracking is done at 8,000 ft to 15,000 ft which is well below the water aquifers. Andy commented on the appalling pollution in Azerbaijan that he had seen when he worked in the oil industry. This was due to poor regulation and enforcement.
The main event of the day was a visit to the Houston Space Center. This is a visitor attraction containing l0ts of space artifacts and interactive exhibits particularly aimed at families. We started with a tram tour of the site which took us to the astronaut training facility. See photographs below. There was equipment for simulation weightlessness, mock up of various space capsules including Orion which is part of the mission to Mars project due to take place before 2030 and much more. Back at the Space Center we had a half-hour presentation by Astronaut Duffy who had recently retired. He talked about the space station programme and life in space in the weightless environment. In another lecture we heard about research that was taking place to investigate long term space travel and particularly as a preparation for visit to Mars. We got to see inside the space shuttle cockpit and some video on space walks from the shuttle and use of the mechanical arm for repairing satellites in installing new equipment in space.
Being the beginning of the school holiday week the Space Center was extremely busy but they coped with it all very efficiently. The cafeteria was huge but it handled the numbers very quickly.
We returned to Andy and Marilyn for a very pleasant evening.
15/03/2016 Tuesday
We next headed for Dallas. A long drive ended at the Dallas Arboretum where we had a lovely walk round beautiful gardens. Lots of tulips in full bloom as well spring flowers and trees just coming into leaf. The white blossom on the cherry trees was impressive.
The next stage of the journey took us to the Hill family farm a few miles outside Fort Worth. Some of Andy’s brothers and sisters live on the farm and they made us very welcome. Their houses are situated on top of a hill with a great view of the surrounding countryside and sufficiently far from the urban sprawl to be nice and quiet. A great place to walk and relax.
16/03/2016 Wednesday
A day for relaxing on the farm. We eventually took off to the Fort Worth Botanic gardens and then to the Stock yards to see the afternoon cattle drive complete with stage coach and a gunfight! In the evening the family gathered for a Texas bar-b-q.
Some photos from the farm
17/03/2016 Thursday
The early morning (about 5 am) was marked by thunder and lightning followed by rain and hail. A siren went off which turned out to be a tornado warning. As nobody got up we just went back to sleep! It turns out that the tornado passed close by and did some damage to wild fowl and cars close to Fort Worth. It also turns out that all this was going on at the time that Sarah was delivering our second grandchild in England. A St Patrick’s day baby coming in with a bang! (Later named as Samuel Richard Warwick Naylor, weighing 8lb 5oz).
Our long trip back to San Antonio was broken by a quick visit to the Ladybird Johnson Wild flower center just outside Austin. The main show was the Blue Bonnets which are beginning to appear everywhere in the countryside and on roadside verges. Other flowers in abundance were the Texas Paintbrush and flowering cacti.
We had a great trip particularly meeting Andy’s family and spending time on the farm. The countryside that we passed through was mainly low trees and flat grasslands with nearly empty river beds. Typical limestone scenery. Eastern Texas between Houston and Dallas is particularly flat. Here there was not as much ribbon development along the freeway as there was between San Antonio/Houston and Dallas/San Antonio. For me one impressive fact was the number of cars and pick-up trucks both on the freeways and, particularly, in the vast and numerous car lots alongside.