Today, a Thursday, was Dale's first day back. I had to remind him that my legs were tired and he was fresh so he might have to slow down; but he assured me that he was pedaling plenty hard and that I was biking much stronger than when he'd last biked with me, a month earlier, in Arkansas.- We biked 42 miles today, from 15 miles east of Magdelena to 5 miles past the Very Large Array. The unassumingly named Very Large Array (VLA) is actually a quite impressive scientific tool used to reveal the invisible universe. It’s been used by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory since 1980. It consists of 28 radio telescopes and antennas (one is a spare), each has an 82-foot dish with 8 receivers tucked inside. Each dish tilts up, down, and spins around depending on what is being studied. Each telescope weighs 230 tons and they are moved on double-wide railroad tracks ranging from a total length of all the dishes together from just over 1/2 mile length to 23 1/2 miles when they are all stretched out. They are currently at their longest setting so we biked along-side them for quite a while and they somehow blended in nicely in the stark landscape among the shrubs, tumbleweeds, and grazing cattle.

The VLA's were featured in the Hollywood movie, "Contact" with Jodie Foster. Biking up and down the New Mexico hills also bring backs other movie memories and provided potential "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" moments although all we saw when we got to the crest of a hill was another hill in the distance.

We drove back and stayed in Magdelena this evening; a small town of we grew to like. The town population is just under 700. We met the mayor at a metal artwork and collectible shop he owned (and lived in the back half) and he had numerous stories to tell about the town. He explained Magdelena survived because there were few other roads to get anywhere west in the area so there was plenty of vehicle traffic as well as high-end guided elk hunting expeditions. Still, the town has challenges. For example, he told us "There isn't any water and we're in a 20 year drought". When the federal government agency came to bail them out and help dig new aquifers they left without writing a check because the town hadn't maintained their reserve wells. So the mayor had had to fire their water maintenance person and the town had struggle a bit to raise funds to fix the wells.

Dale went to a boxcar museum (the entire museum filling up one rail-road boxcar) and learned more about the town. It had a mining history and for many years was the shipping location of a major Southwest cattle drive (Think

Chisolm Trail). The holding pens are still there across from the museum. The last cattle drive was in the early 1970's and the railroad left town shortly after.

We had one of the best meals on our trip that evening at a cozy restaurant called Tumbleweeds. It is little cafe that had been vacant for several years before being rehabbed by a couple that had recently moved to Magdelena after Covid-19 forced the closure of their successful catering business in Oregon.

Dale and Marie also stopped by the library (the old railroad station) that evening where there was a star party. Several local astronomers had set up telescopes for folks to view the moon. Astronomers love Magdalena and New Mexico because of the wide open space, dry weather conditions, and limited light pollution.