Albuquerque's Annual Balloon Fiesta - What kind of festival brings 20,000 people out in the chilly predawn hours to wait for the main event to start?  I squeeze through shoulder-to-shoulder crowds and buy a cup of coffee and a breakfast burrito, then join the half-awake masses on the grassy field. This isn't a stadium rock concert or a Superbowl tailgate party, it's the largest hot-air-balloon festival in the world. Each October, 750 balloonists from dozens of nations gather in Albuquerque for the nine-day International Balloon Fiesta.   More...

Wildfires: The Ugly, The Bad and the Good - In the 1860's, a youthful Mark Twain had encamped with a friend along the forested shoreline of Lake Tahoe. Twain built a campfire, which he carelessly neglected just for a moment. Suddenly, his friend shouted in alarm. Looking up, as Twain said in his book Roughing It, "…I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises! More...

Cassini Call Home - It is a “Mission Possible” - to infuse children and adults with the wonderment and awe of outer space by exposing them to the giant antennas at Goldstone Deep Space Communication Complex.

How do you define “wonderment” ?

Dictionaries are very simple.
“Something that produces wonder; a marvel.”
“A cause or occasion of wonder.”
“The joy of discovery.”

The last sentence. That’s it. That is what I felt when I saw the giant communication antennas up close and personal on my tour of the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. More...

Kartchner Caverns - Inside the upper caverns of Kartchner, two main galleries the size of football fields are a kaleidoscope of color with 100-foot high ceilings dripping with multi hued stalactites and floors jutting up with matching stalagmites. Giant white columns form where the two meet. Dainty white helictites\ translucent orange bacon, and shields of white calcite adorn this natural wonder. An extraordinarily thin stalactite, called a soda straw, hangs tenuously 21 feet 2 inches down from the cave's ceiling.  More...