I went to the Lowell Observatory and the only photo I got was this funny T-shirt

This last September I took a day off work to drive up to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. It’s the site where the planet Pluto was first seen, and one of the first astronomical observatories of its kind in North America. I went because there was a lecture happening that evening that sounded interesting (it ended up not being anything to write home about, so I won’t), and because I’ve wanted to go for years.

The Lowell Observatory is only a few hours drive from my town, so the fact that I’d never gone before was mostly due to wanting someone else to go with me. I’d forget about it every so often, until a family member would mention driving through Arizona to get to somewhere else, and I’d think ‘ooh, could we stop for a few hours in Flagstaff?’ And of course we never could, and then I’d forget about it, and time would pass, etc. etc.

Anyway, I finally did it, and loved every minute of it. The observatory has tours and museums dedicated to Pluto’s discovery and research, a topic near and dear to my heart. There’s telescopes in the day to see the sun, and at night to see distant nebulae and galaxies. The light pollution in the city is intentionally kept low, so you can see millions of stars at night, and it was beautiful. Everything I hoped for.

And then I got home and realized the only photograph that I had taken was of a dorky thing I saw at the gift shop that I wanted to send to a friend.

Squarespace, the platform I’m using to host this website, is a very image-heavy platform. Most websites and blogs are nowadays, it seems. I’m sure if I worked at it I could get a blog here that is text-only, but for now each blog post needs an image thumbnail (or, wants one, at least). I don’t like accidentally stealing images online so I figured it would be easier to use photographs I’ve myself had taken as my post thumbnails. It makes it much harder to do that when I rarely ever take photos.

I do take photos from time to time, though. My phone is loaded with images of my cats, or cars with funny license plates, or some ducks I saw at the park behind where I work. When the weather cools down, the percentage of duck photos on my phone goes way up. But I don’t take photos when visiting the astronomical institution I’ve been dreaming of getting to see for years.

I don’t have a pithy comment on the human habit of visual preservation, or my inability to recognize moments of person importance, or anything like that. I’ve never been concise about anything. What I do have is $100 worth of knick-knacks at the gift shop, a text to a friend telling her the stars are beautiful, a new podcast that helped me survive the long trip back home, and a photo of this funny T-shirt I bought, which I took when I realized I needed a photo for this post.

I think the trip was worth the money.