A horse is a horse, of course, of course!

Today began slowly because many of our various activities not beginning until later. Thus, many of us spent the morning crunching through the collected data. Later, Jenn and I were dropped off by the group of hikers at a ranch where we took a quick, two hour tour. Although the saddle left a permanent imprint in my posterior region, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride as well as taking a chance to gather some scrambled thoughts from the past few days. I'm pretty sure the ride left menrather dehydrated and I'm thus feeling a touch under-the-weather. I am drinking ample amounts of water and, to further recover, am heading to bed immediately following the posting of this blog.

After we returned to the hotel, I caught maybe 20 minutes of a nap before dinner. After dinner, we all piled into DA's room to watch a documentary of Hale's legacy. I was personally interested in the first telescope featured on the film. Please enjoy this short story: Last summer, my mom was finally able to purchase a house very near to her dream home. She, for near 25 years, has made a long drive from Janesville to Delavan each day for work. She's been wanting to move closer to work since I graduated high school. After three years of searching and waiting for her house to sell, she and my grandmother purchased a home in the gated, golf community of Geneva National. As a newly instated homeowner member, she (and my grandmother) have been invited to several "ritzy" parties, one of which introduced my grandmother to one of the people heading Yerkie's observatory. Through discussion, I was soon invited to a private tour of the observatory during my spring break this year. I was therefore rather ecstatic to finally hear the story of this revolutionary (in it's day) telescope.