Arkansas Dark Sky Festival (and Nature Fest)

Arkansas Dark Sky Festival / Nature Fest at Bear Creek Cabins

(click on this link to see lovely drone footage of the site at Bear Creek)

(photo by Rocky Togni)

Some people call it a Dark Sky Festival. Some people call it a Star Party. For me, it was a Nature Fest!


As is so often the case, the weather forecast was unreliable -- even on the days of the event. Each night we were supposed to have partly cloudy or fully cloudy skies. And each night we had great dark-sky conditions. Thursday cleared up just as it got dark and was perfect all night. Our avid amateurs were viewing the dim fuzzies until after 3 am. Friday night was a bit more questionable, but the clouds dissipated about 9:30 with great viewing thereafter. Saturday was forecast to be cloudy so I was told to prepare a campfire, but instead the clouds cleared off just after it got fully dark and there was great viewing again. My take: never trust a forecast. (Click on this link to see a lovely photo by Alan Wagoner of the Milky Way taken during the star party.)


The Nature Fest also had plenty of activities. Sue staffed our NCAMN table and found plenty of interest from the public. We are confident that this event will have produced several new members for various AMN branches. Sue is already working on ideas for making our table even more of an attraction next year.


The festival also had tables for two Audubon societies, the Ozark Society, NWA Space, and others. All shared knowledge about nature and staffed activities for adults and kids.


During the daytime I talked about the Sun and the upcoming eclipses. I also taught people how to use library telescopes and how to see sunspots using a white-light solar filter. Sam Morris (standing just behind me in the above photo) showed off stunning views of active coronal mass ejections using his Lundt 35 mm hydrogen-alpha solar scope. Those are highly specialized items that you won’t get to use very often, so it was a treat.


We heard fine talks on a variety of topics in nature. Birds --

(photo by Rocky Togni)

And seasonal habitats for insects and birds, presented by Laurie Scott of Northwest Arkansas Master Naturalists.



(photo by Rocky Togni)

And, of course, Dr. Amber Straughn speaking about the James Webb Telescope (introduced by event Chair, Bruce McMath) --

(photo by Rocky Togni)

(Click on this link to see the crowd gathered to hear Dr. Straughn's speech.)

But my absolute favorite part of the Nature Fest was organizing and helping to lead Nature Walks on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. If you like nature walks, it’s hard to beat rambling along a clear Ozark stream like Bear Creek. We saw lots of wildflowers, lots of insects, and we climbed to the top of the Boone Buttresses. There are only two known buttress formations in Arkansas. This one is on the private property of Bear Creek Ranch so the best way to explore it is to come to next year’s Dark Sky Festival. I think you’ll find the trip very worthwhile. Click this link to see a great panoramic shot by Alan Wagoner of the full buttress formation.

(Photo by Angela Chandler)

Laurie Scott (NWAMN) and I (NCAMN) led the hike on Friday morning. Here is our Friday group crossing the creek on our way to the bluff. We were fortunate to be joined by Katie Morris, an AGFC specialist, who caught two different species of crayfish and a cricket frog for us to hold and admire in our own sweaty palms. Here Laurie and I are seated on the very edge of the bluff pictured above:

And below we have a picture of Katie Morris along with my good friend Rocky Togni, who is perhaps the most accomplished amateur astronomer in the state of Arkansas. You don’t often get to hike with such experts . . . unless you join Amy and Ellen on our regular wildflower walks!

Planning is already underway for the 3rd annual Arkansas Dark Sky Festival. Once again it will be held at Bear Creek Cabins, from September 26 - 28, 2024.  .  . . Click here for a final, soothing photo of reflections in the swimming hole by the pavilion.

Getting New Gears -- Tongsheng TSDZ2 mid-drive conversion kit

When we are young, time is our friend. We grow taller, we get stronger, we learn how to prosper. But eventually -- for everyone -- time becomes a determined and implacable foe. Sadly, that bad old dude has now turned against me.

Back in 2011 I wrote about my experiences with supraventricular tachycardia, an arrhythmia of the heart that is especially common among endurance athletes. I first learned that I had it in 2004 so I've now had eighteen good years of continuous fitness. But now the SVT has become atrial fibrillation. Fortunately, it is almost entirely asymptomatic, except that my heart-rate does tend to spike high enough during exercise that I get a little frightened. 

When times change, it's necessary to change with the times. Almost the first thing I did when I noticed this fibrillation is order an e-bike conversion kit. Scaling back on biking is possible; quitting is not!

Shopping for e-bikes is a blast, and I've actually been attracted to them for a number of years. The latest road e-bikes by Cannondale, Trek, and Specialized are wonders. They let you ride an e-bike that is so beautifully designed nobody can even tell it is an e-bike. But they are costly and so intricately manufactured that repairs must be a nightmare. I've spent enough years working on my own bikes that I really appreciate having them easy to fix.

When both performance and ease of repair are the top priorities, a mid-drive e-bike conversion kit becomes the obvious choice. At the moment Bafang and Tongsheng are the key players in this segment of the market. The Bafang kits have a little more power and begin to resemble electric motorcycles at times. The Tongsheng kit has a peddle-assist technology that makes riding the electric bike quite like riding a regular bike -- albeit with bionic legs.

Here is a photo of the Tongsheng TSDZ2 mid-drive conversion kit that I bought:

You can see the very hefty (and ugly) battery on the left, then the motor and computer display, then the cranks and speed sensor (along with a few parts I did not use).

Now here is a photo of the full installation on my gravel bike:

Except for the bulky battery, the bike looks about the same as always. And I'm not going to complain about that battery. So far, I have ridden over 40 miles and the charge indicator has only now started to drop. I'm hoping to see if it will go 100 miles before re-charging. If so, I'll be impressed and amazed.

What's it like to ride this e-bike? It's fun. The bike feels almost the same, but the multiple levels of power assist help me up the hills. I'm still getting some decent exercise, but I'm reassured to have "turbo mode" waiting in the wings in case my heart hits overload.

I'll conclude with a few links to YouTube videos that I found useful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPwxwLKfDSw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wThQH5Iy9uQ&list=WL&index=62

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7ve958hJXE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK1Cx2CcNSA

https://youtu.be/0egW8O1MOV4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlMZTA36elQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRYwzLWfvXc

 

Update 2/12/22: I've now ridden my e-bike about 200 miles and have a few preliminary thoughts. (1) The power assist is very smooth. In Eco mode I get just enough help to cruise on relatively flat roads and up hills of 10% or so. In Tour mode I feel as if I have bionic legs, but I'm still clearly riding a bike and getting good exercise. I rarely use Speed mode and Turbo (mostly because I am out there to get some exercise and not to go fast), but Speed mode reaches the kinds of speeds that I used to achieve during a hard time trial and does so with the same amount of work as in Eco mode. Turbo mode is just what it implies -- a nice rush of speed and excitement with relatively little effort. (2) Using the E-bike has forced me to change some of my basic cycling habits. Because the pedal-assist is triggered by pressure on the pedals, I've had to develop a slower, smoother cadence -- and I have to remain seated all the time. The second point is a huge change for me. I was a climber and loved to stand on the pedals while stomping up steep hills. Now I need to remain seated, shift into a gear that keeps my cadence down, and let the motor pull me up. I'm still working harder than on the flats, but I can keep my heart-rate under 160! (3) The honking big battery on my bike is heavy (8.5 pounds) but the total weight of the e-bike (41 pounds) is still ten pounds less than the weight of similar Trek bikes. I've gone more than 70 miles on a single charge and still had plenty of charge left for another 30 miles or so. (4) I can easily remove the battery to put the bike in the back of the car or to use the bike as a normal ride.

Breeding Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)

On Friday, February 7, 2020, I achieved a long-awaited personal "first"! I saw Yellow-Spotted Salamanders searching for mates in my pond. I had long known this must happen, but -- unlike frogs -- salamanders do not sing loudly while calling for companionship. They are silent searchers. Yet salamanders there must be. I had seen one on several occasions in a hole under the cabin, and my grandson Adam had once shown me a salamander tadpole he netted in the pond. So I was very excited to actually see them in the pond.

You might think that I have chosen a rather poor photograph for this blog page -- and in most respects you would be right. But if you use just a bit of imagination, you can see the large (7") yellow-spotted salamander crawling just over the top of the submerged lily pads. You can also see that some of the submerged lily pads have been scoured clean of the brown pond scum and show up lime green. That scouring was caused by the movements of multiple salamanders crawling around searching for mates. In future Februaries I will try to remain alert and look for salamanders whenever I see the tell-tale lime green leaves.

Here is an image from the web of a more clearly visible yellow-spotted salamander: