{"id":782,"date":"2025-05-07T20:00:46","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T00:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/?p=782"},"modified":"2025-05-07T20:00:47","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T00:00:47","slug":"finally-a-tourist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/2025\/05\/07\/finally-a-tourist\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally a tourist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After two weeks on the road, yesterday was the first time I got to play tourist. At first, given my uneducated planning efforts, I was rushing, driving 1800 miles to get to a family wedding on time. Easy in a car; not so much in a high-top camper van. After the wedding, and a much needed day of rest, But yesterday I got to Midland TX, home of both the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum<\/a> and the I-20 Wildlife Preserve<\/a>. Opposite ends of the spectrum, so to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After a family history in the oil business, I was interested to see the museum. It did what I expected in promoting and glorifying the oil industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Entrance<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The words “climate change” are not to be found there. They do however have a room full of awesome and beautiful crystals, another interest of the museum’s founder, including this huge amethyst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The wildlife preserve was more interesting and fun. I had no idea it was there until I camped in the RV park across the street. The have an 86 acre “urban playa”<\/a> lake. Some open water, but surrounded by wildlife habitat. There is a 1.5 mile path around it, with blinds you can stand behind and be much less seen by the wildlife. I needed the long walk after so many days on the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people at this preserve have developed the iNaturalist app for the iPhone<\/a>. Point your phone at any living thing, take a picture and it will tell you what it is. If the quality of the image is not quite good enough, it might tell you, “that’s a bird!” as opposed to what kind of bird. But birds are small and far away and usually backlit, all of which make identification difficult. The lizards ware impossible for me: small, constantly moving, and almost the same color as the path they scurried along. But for plants it works great. You can also use a better camera setup and feed those images into the app. (I haven’t tested this.) I also haven’t tested how it works in some other environment, such as upstate NY for example. I will report back about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m having issues with the photos in WordPress, possibly related to my old theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After two weeks on the road, yesterday was the first time I got to play tourist. At first, given my uneducated planning efforts, I was rushing, driving 1800 miles to get to a family wedding on time. Easy in a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[429,159],"tags":[471,472],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photoblog","category-travel","tag-oil-industry","tag-wildlife-preserve"],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amosnewcombe.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}