Riding my Bike to the Old NASA Site and Prospecting for Obsidian

 

My wife Andee mailed me 7-layer cookies for Christmas along with many of my favorite snack items that are not available here. My sister Tish also sent me a nice care package with items from Trader Joe's Thank you, Andee and Tish! 

A fine day for a bike ride.

It's hard to believe that Green Mountain was completely brown less than 200 years ago. Thanks to Charles Darwin for instigating the populating of the mountain with plants and trees from the UK and other parts of the world. Darwin created a self-sustaining and self-reproducing ecosystem in order to make Ascension Island more habitable

The front door of the old NASA site. It is only 8 miles from the base and an almost 3-hour walk since it is all uphill. With the bike, the ride was only 2 hours.

Prospecting for obsidian - black volcanic glass.

Such a beautiful natural stone.

Finding obsidian can be a bit rough.

Obsidian is found in this wash.

Mexican thorn bushes can be a real pain.

Another view of Sister Peak that I hiked.

The largest Mexican thorn bush yet!

I paid them the toll on the way to Green Mountain.

I made a partial climb up Green Mountain on a recent Sunday before work.

The scary part was the descent with steep hairpin turns. I was riding the disc brakes all the way.

I have been riding more offroad trails to see where they lead. 

I woke this guy up.

This trail led to a beautiful coastal cove.

I was sitting on a rock taking a break when I heard a noise and found this nesting tern in a very cool spot. I moved over to another rock.

All electrical circuits have an earth ground to disperse electric current. Ascension Island however is too porous to have a regular earth ground which is commonly a metal spike driven into the ground. So on Ascension, all electrical circuits around the entire island are connected together with copper cables.

As you can imagine there are miles and miles of copper grounding cables wherever there is electricity. This copper cable is simply laying on the ground but interconnected.