A Wild National Park Appears!

First off, need to point out the major success: I woke up in the van without any aches or pains, slept like a baby!

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Then I headed to the roadtrip's first destination: The Very Large Array (VLA). I was so pleasantly surprised, it was super neat! I found the place randomly on my roadtrip planning app, and was like "eh, may as well" and it was so cool. They had a great visitor experience; demonstrations, walking tour, and a comfy theater room where you could watch a documentary voiced by Jodie Foster! The documentary was honestly way better than it should have been, I think they stole the film crew from the Foster and McConaughey movie that was shot there.

Also fun fact: the radio antenna in the satellite dishes are chilled to negative 423 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees kelvin). It helps reduce electromagnetic interference, since your cell phone is a billion billion times stronger than the radio waves the satellites are capturing.

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But after admiring the white steel flowers of New Mexico, I headed to Arizona. That's when I was jumpscared by Petrified Forest National Park on my Google Maps. It was just 20 minutes off my route, so I figured I would add another one to the list.

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It was a fascinating park, it is a strong uncanny valley experience walking a trail and your brain going "oh look, a tree... no a rock.... no a tree". Plus the on and off rain today made the weather just perfect.

After my wild National Park encounter I hit the road again to a unmarked road pull-off 30 minutes from Monument Valley. And on the drive I learned that ChatGPT will cut you off after an hour of using the voice chat function, so coldhearted, I thought she liked me (please know I use it for answering my weird science questions, if I wanted sexy talk I would call Mitchell).

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Now for a night of hoping I don't wake up to a knock on my window! TLDR: Great day, ate a taco, 9/10.