I do believe there's either a folk song or an early country-western song (not much difference, come to think) about Big Bill Murphy, so he's immortalized at least two ways. I've been to Meteor Crater, and the Grand Canyon! Back when I was a bit of a kit...when we had vacations, we'd drive around all over, mostly at night when it was during the summer, largely because I don't think we owned a vehicle that had air conditioning until, oh, like the 1980s (and this was.......a bit before that...), and driving at night was way smarter than trying it at high noon with the shaded temperatures in the strong triple digits (temps are taken in the shade, because a sunshine temp that would be merely unpleasantly hot for us homeotherms would be permanently destructive towards a mere mercury thermometer. At least we can sweat and drink more water). We appreciated motels at such times even more than shaded campgrounds. ;-> Uwk
True, Uwk, and we usually drove across Nevada, either heading to Northern CA via I-80 or Southern CA via I-15. Definitely no AC - remember the canvas water bags you were supposed to fasten to your bumper so the air flow would cool the water? No seat belts, either - when we were very small, one of us would lie on the floor, another on the seat, and the third in the back window. When I was a little bigger, I remember slouching in my seat until my knees were against the back of the front seat and sleeping that way. Sure couldn't do it now!
Nope, we didn't do the water bag bit, just wet down towels and "hung" them from our side windows by virtue of hand-cranking (remember hand cranks? They were lovely! ) the windows up until they pinned the towels in place. And my folks were paranoid enough to make sure they got vehicles that came equipped with seat belts...but until it was made a law (which I actually do appreciate), I, too, would either lie in the back window area (until I got big enough the folks would yell at me for blocking the rearview mirror ;->) or curl up in the feet well area for each seat in the back...I used to fit that way, believe it or not. ;-> And of course the real pick-up truck we had (seated 2.5 people [two adults and a kid], tops, in the cab; the rest was a REAL, WORKING TRUCK BED, thanks, not a "car's" big open trunk), had no seat belts in the bed of it. You squirreled around in the back and hope the roads weren't too rough and bouncy. ;-> Uwk
Ah the good old days SIGH! I miss sneaking into the drive-in we used to get like 6 of us and 4 would hide in the trunk when we went through to pay, and then get out after we were inside. I don't think drive-ins exist anymore. And hand cranks on the windows were awesome you could actually put the window where you wanted it, now with these auto things you have to play with it for 5 minutes just to get it in the middle or at least high enough the dog can't jump out. Driving at night anymore at least around here can be kind of dangerous if it's Friday or Saturday and the bars are closing.
Yeah, my mom hated driving at night, and sure as HELL didn't want me to once I was on my own (as an adult...). :-/ Uwk who also misses drive-ins
there are still drive in movie theaters Breanna I did not mention one of them that was on our road trip because I thought we got better places to go to. when my kids were small we go there to watch a movie in piece there was one in the bay area with 2 screens. the kids would fall asleep and we were able to watch our movie without hiring a babysitter. I remember watching the number one Star wars ( the prequel to the old trilogy ) and the actress playing Padme had a close up and you could see every pimple on her face . There are still around 350 drive in movie theaters in the US .
There are about 300 drive-in movie theaters left, out of around 4 to 5 thousand, just in the U.S. A few have been built as new. And old ones that couldn't afford to convert to satellite downloads, over twenty-five thousand dollars, had to close. Some closed due to Daylight Saving Time, or the next generation didn't want to deal with it, or hurricanes/tornados knocked down the screens and the didn't have the money to fix them. There were drive-ins with as few as 50 parking places, and as many as 5,000 parking spots with around 7 screens. Yeah, I had a drive-in movie theater site. I tried looking the others up a month or so ago, they are gone to. The collating/catalging sites I mean. Many of the remaining drive-ins have their own web sites. I still have hand crank windows. Auto sales place told me I couldn't get enough credit to afford the $500 add-on of power windows. Rest is power, steering, brakes, air/heat. I got to watch 'Lt. Robinson Crusoe on Mars' at a drive-in.
Another factor in the death of drive-ins is property values. There are very few left in California that I know of, functional ones, anyway (some have been converted into swap meet sites); for most, the sheer amount of land involved made them very attractive to just about anything else, up to and especially including real estate. :-/ Uwk
another thing I like about drive in movie theaters is you can walk over to the snack stand and not miss any of the movie wile you bring back your nachos and cheese or yea popcorn you can set up chairs outside your car and a picnic table too and bring your own drinks I did mention one drive in movie theater on the road trip 0( # ^_^ # )0 the **** movie theater . hidden away in the woods so no kids wonder in there ( in the middle of the night ? ) I wonder if the show ghost **** ?
Too true! Strangely enough, considering how "isolated" everyone was in their cars, theoretically (and I loved that you could pile a bunch of kids in a car and pay X amount for the entire car, rather than by a head, at least where we were ;->), in a way, I think it was more of a social, community-type gathering than the theater experience today. What are the bleeped out words in the ****s? Uwk
I loved the drive-in too for lots of reasons, it was just so much more comfy lounging in your own car than those hard upright chairs at normal ones. I think we have only 1 left around us and all it does is XXX movies, at least that is what the sign out front says.
Big box store malls bought up a number of them. The ones under 100 car spaces were typically in New England ( Northeast US ), between a river and a hill. I have contemplated putting the site back up, but people were copying it and claiming they did the work.
Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916 with his General Theory of Relativity. They did not start being called Black Holes until 1967 when the phrase was coined by Astronomer John Wheeler. Prior to that they were just known as dark cores. There are 3 types of Black Holes, Small or Stellar Black Holes which are formed when stars greater than 3 times the solar mass of the Sun burn through their fuel and collapse in on themselves. They continue to collapse and become very dense compressing themselves into a space less than that of New York City, creating an immense gravitational field from which not even light can escape, and they just begin gobbling up anything that comes within range of them. The second type which is the relatively new kid on the block is the Mid-Sized or Intermediate Black Hole. These are formed when stars in a cluster collide in a chain reaction. Several of these IMBHs forming in the same region could then eventually fall together in the center of a galaxy and create a supermassive black hole. In 2014, astronomers found an intermediate mass black hole in the arm of a spiral galaxy. The third type of Black Hole is the Supermassive Black Hole. These enormous black holes are millions or even billions of times as massive as the sun, but are about the same size in diameter. They are thought to lie at the center of pretty much every galaxy, including the Milky Way. Physicists, Astrophysicists, and Astronomers are not certain how such large black holes spawn. Once these giants have formed, they gather mass from the dust and gas around them, material that is plentiful in the center of galaxies, allowing them to grow to even more enormous sizes. Supermassive black holes may be the result of hundreds or thousands of tiny black holes that merge together. Large gas clouds could also be responsible, collapsing together and rapidly accreting mass. A third option is the collapse of a stellar cluster, a group of stars all falling together. Fourth, supermassive black holes could arise from large clusters of dark matter. This is a substance that we can observe through its gravitational effect on other objects; however, we don't know what dark matter is composed of because it does not emit light and cannot be directly observed. We have known about dark matter in the Universe for decades as it is the only way to account for certain fluctuations in planetary, star, and galactical movement, but you cannot actually see it with any type of telescope but there are large "patches" of it in every galaxy observed. As for String Theory, I am still up in the air on this. Basically they are using this to bridge the gaps between classical physics and quantum physics by saying this is the Theory of Everything and I am not buying that. I am not convinced that a single theory can describe every single thing in the Universe. Especially when that theory is based on loops called strings. Which are just another particle like protons, neutrons, and electrons.
We lived in the States for about 6 months when I was 13 or 14 before returning to Ireland. We had a Drive-In with 6 Screens. We piled 18 of us into a Ford Gremlin and went and saw Phantasm. It was $6 a car load. Of course when we got through the gate everybody decompressed out of the clown car and sat on the ground or all over the car. Bad thing was there was a huge cemetary across the road from the drive-in.
Last time I watched a documentary on string theory, none of the theoretical physicists agreed with each other.
Good Afternoon ROAD TRIPPERS!!! I apologize for my lack of details about our day yesterday at Meteor Crater and the Grand Canyon, that icky thing called IRL prevented me from writing. We are still staying at the Grand Canyon Lodge as we are using that as Home Base for this last leg of our SUMMER ROAD TRIP 2019. Today we are visiting the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. We began our journey about 30 miles north of Cameron, Arizona near the Southeastern Rim of the Grand Canyon. We have just be driving at a leisurely pace and stopping at the various trading posts and scenic outlooks as we come to them. We will traverse through the Painted Desert and into the Petrified Forest as they overlap. We will have a long stop at the visitors center when we enter the Petrified Forest. There are a myriad of shops there, some small restaurants, FRY BREAD, and more. Its will be a great and memorable day. When we are tired of driving, we can port back to the Grand Canyon Lodge for cocktails and dinner and relaxation. Tomorrow, I have scheduled a visit to Flandrau Planetarium at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Biosphere 2, a port to Oatman (I think you will all really like this), and Kartchner Caverns near Benson, Arizona. Alrighty everybody we have a lot of high desert to see. Luckily there are no storm clouds so the viewing is fantastic today.
