Change of Plans

As I mentioned in my earlier post here, "These images are all from the free version of "Google Earth" available at http://earth.google.com/ It will only appear this way if you check Earth City Lights under NASA under Featured Content. All these images are copyright 2007 Google, copyright 2007 Terrametrics and copyright 2007 Europa Technologies."

In the aforementioned post I showed a Google Earth City Lights image of where we were planning on going on vacation with my in-laws. It turns out that my in-laws (they're super by the way) had just finished hosting a conference and, being a little tired, they weren't really up to traveling 8 hours one-way to "relax". So we all decided to hang out at the campground where the conference had been and just take it easy.

Here is the Google Earth City Lights image (again at an "eye altitude" of 50 miles) of the campground and surrounding area. This campground is located just to the south of Monterrey, Mexico; a modern metropolitan city if there ever was one.

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A short drive to the southeast you can go shopping in Villa de Santiago and a short drive to the north you can find modern malls, Wal-Mart, H-E-B, Pollo Loco, Burger King, McDonald's, many museums, a planetarium, amusement parks, and that's not all.

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Despite the somewhat large population of Monterrey and the amount of automobile exhaust connected to that, Monterrey does not suffer from the pollution problems plaguing Mexico City. This is because Mexico City is surrounded by mountains and that puts it in the middle of a "bowl" while Monterrey is wrapped around a mountain so the smog isn't trapped. (but i digress...)

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We had a great time, played Rummikub (in Spanish) and I found the whole experience very relaxing. Three cheers for great in-laws!!!