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Any interesting places in tornado alley?
E.T
Quote-o-matic
in Zocalo v2.0
I'm planning to do about two week storm chasing vacation in later part of May with few other storm chasers.
Chase area would be roughly from Texas to Nebraska so does anyone of you know places worth seeing in case of "empty days"?
Strategic Air and Space Museum in Nebraska would be definitely interesting place.
What I've checked there's also few airshows around 20th day... at least one in Dyess AFB might be interesting.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much of more known natural sights in area, maybe Carlsbad Caverns and few others would be reachable.
Chase area would be roughly from Texas to Nebraska so does anyone of you know places worth seeing in case of "empty days"?
Strategic Air and Space Museum in Nebraska would be definitely interesting place.
What I've checked there's also few airshows around 20th day... at least one in Dyess AFB might be interesting.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much of more known natural sights in area, maybe Carlsbad Caverns and few others would be reachable.
Comments
As far as what to see when your not storm chasing. The caverns are pretty cool. Been once with some friends. It is perpetually 70 deg in the cavern, so its a great thing to do when its 120 in the desert. Still, some really neat sights if your in to that sort of thing. There is a second non-family style tour of a different part of the cave that sounds much more interesting. Its actual spelunking, not walking down a trail with a guard rail and an mp3 player telling you the sights.
Tulsa OK is a good town. There is an air museum there worth seeing.
You should really kind of narrow down your search area though. Unless you like driving... Keep us updated.
If you do go to Carlsbad, stick around for the bat watching in the evening. I'll warn you though: the town closes up early, so if you want food, don't wait until after the bats come out; end the day in the caves early, go get food, then come back for the bats. At least, it closed up early when I was there 13 years ago. I assume it still does.
[B]...walking down a trail with a guard rail and an mp3 player telling you the sights.[/B][/QUOTE]Now who idiot has conceived that kind tour?
Or maybe guides needed to be replaced with MP3 players when all guides committed suicide because of [url=http://rinkworks.com/said/ranger.shtml]stupid questions[/url].
[quote]You should really kind of narrow down your search area though. Unless you like driving...[/quote]Do you then know a rain dance for attracting thunderstorms?
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Random Chaos [/i]
[B]Carlsbad Caverns are a long way from Nebraska, no matter how you go.[/B][/QUOTE]Long way? Looks more like day's driving (and I don't think roads need to circle lakes much in there), nothing we wouldn't do if weather conditions are much more favorable in other place.
Of course we wouldn't do that just for "secondary" objectives.
What's normal temperature range in there at that time of year?
I guess "shorts and t-shirt" for us Finns...
When I was out there it was late July/early August, and while most locations were hot (80-110F), there was still heavy snow on the north rim of the grand canyon - it had only opened to vehicles a week earlier and had several feet left to melt, and the nights got cold, especially in the desert, down to jacket weather sometimes (though for you, it might be t-shirt :D).
There is some really spectacular scenery out there if you know where to look. If you're going to make the trip, check out a few ancient Indian ruins in New Mexico/Arizona (Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, etc).
--RC
As far as food goes, the town has grown somewhat in last 4 years. They have a Chili's now that is open till 10pm or 1030pm I don't remember. There are the usual fast food options but most of the restaurants are local flavor and not open late. There are a couple local joints that are pretty good though, both bbq places. One is a red brick building, I think its even call the Red Brick bbq or something. The other is on the other side of town and used to be a Dairy Queen that sold bbq (i know weird) but the owner had a DQ and then did his own thing. DQ apparently didn't like it and revoked his franchise so he just remodeled it and renamed it. Unfortunately I'm terrible with names and don't remember what it is. But I'm due a trip out before May, so I will look at it when I go.
The Caverns themselves are a good half hour from Carlsbad. You have to go south to El Paso and at White's City you turn right and travel up to the top of the cliff the caverns are in. In May, it will be in the 90's during the day, but bring a coat because the desert gets cool at night.
As for the path and mp3 guided tour, like I said it was kind of a lackluster way to see something that really is spectacular. Its all lit up with lights everywhere, but thats just not cave exploring to me. I lived in Kentucky for a few years as a kid and my dad would take me spelunking through some of the caves in and around Somerset. Still, for being an underground cave system, its pretty impressive.
Oklahoma would be practically best starting place (quite central position and also good statistically) but seems like there aren't any straight flights from JFK to there.
Edit: actually check out JetBlue, they have lots of flights going to a bunch of places you wouldn't expect and they are a great airline
[B]JFK!? Hey! I'm near there! :D
Edit: actually check out JetBlue, they have lots of flights going to a bunch of places you wouldn't expect and they are a great airline [/B][/QUOTE]JetBlue would just take farther from Oklahoma than AA...
Oneworld's search gives total travel time from Helsinki (HEL/EFHK) to Oklahoma City (OKC/KOKC) or Tulsa (TUL/KTUL) to be little under 17 hours through JFK (KJFK) and Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW/KDFW).
Other "short" routes to Oklahoma would be through Manchester and O'Hare, Frankfurt and Dallas-Fort Worth and Zurich and Dallas-Forth Worth.
Star Alliance's search gives routes through airports I'm not interested.
Sky Team again goes primarily through Amsterdam or Paris, which I'm not interested.
I wonder would it be "bureaucratically" easier to make one of the stops in EU, in that case I would prefer Zurich (I think Alps should show to airplane) although airport procedures are propably equally annoying everywhere.
And to top of flying time there's five hours more for getting into Helsinki.