Monthly Archives: April 2010
Albuquerque…
We left Las Vegas about 7:45am heading for Albuquerque, NM, on our way to the Trinity A-Bomb Test Site on Saturday.
As I said yesterday, Trinity Site is opened to the public twice a year, on the first Saturdays in April and October. I had wanted to visit the site when I was working for NASA out at White Sands Missile Range in the early 80’s. But my schedule never matched up.
Since we were leaving early, I decided to take the shorter route over Hoover Dam. Later in the day the heavy traffic of the tourists visiting the dam would have meant a very slow trip.
This time we did have to pull over and get inspected before driving over the dam. They were curious about all the stuff in the back of our truck. But it only took about 5 minutes and we were on our way.
We found that in the last few weeks since we visited the dam with our friends Nick and Terry Russell, not much more had been done on the bridge.
I still don’t think they’re going to have this bridge finished by August as they promise.
About 5 miles past the dam, we did have a 10 minute delay due to the construction being done on the road approaches to the new bridge.
About 70 miles out of Las Vegas we passed the turn-off to the Grand Canyon Skywalk. The Grand Canyon Skywalk is the glass-bottom walkway built out over the Grand Canyon 4000 feet below.
This is something else that has been on my bucket list, and if we have time I want to visit it on the way back to Las Vegas. I’ll probably have to get Jan a little drunk to get her out on it. On second thought, maybe a LOT drunk.
We stopped off in Kingman AZ about 10 am for Starbucks Coffee and a bathroom break. Kingman is where Nick and Terry are right now, but I didn’t wanted to call and take a chance on waking them up. So I sent Nick a text message, but the cell service is so bad there that it didn’t go through until much later.
On our way toward Flagstaff we encountered a lot of snow still on the ground along the roadway.
And even more still on the nearby mountains.
We got into Flagstaff about 12:30 and ate lunch at Coco’s. It was in the high 40’s there and large snow drifts were still piled up everywhere.
One of the reasons there’s still so much snow here is that the elevation is over 7000 feet. We had climbed almost a mile in altitude since we left Las Vegas this morning.
About 35 miles out of Flagstaff we passed the turn-off to Meteor Crater. We visited the crater when we were thru here two years ago. And it’s a really stunning site.
The crater was created about 40,000 years ago when a meteor, about 150 feet in diameter, and traveling at around 30,000 mph, stuck the Arizona desert. The meteor weighed over 300,000 tons and created a crater 4000 feet in diameter and almost 600 feet deep. The rim around the crater was pushed up almost 150 feet high.
A few miles further east we drove thru Winslow AZ, as in “standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona” fame. This song, “Take it Easy” by the Eagles, is really Winslow’s only claim to fame. It’s actually a pretty run-down place since the Interstate bypassed the town. Previously, the town was a main stop on the old Route 66, but it had been all down hill since then.
Today a statue commemorates the spot and the song.
And it’s complete with a ‘flat-bed Ford”.
We tried to get up close to the spot but there is so much construction in the area that you can’t get anywhere close to it except by walking three or four blocks.
I had decided to get gas in the Winslow so I had been checking out prices. When we came off the Interstate there was a Shell station with unleaded at 3.099. Ouch.
I decided to wait a while. And I’m glad I did.
While we were at the Flying J we saw a really nice bus conversion, complete with dogs hanging out the window.
The nameplate says it’s called ‘OLROVER”
After stopping for a bathroom break at a Petro Truck Stop about 80 miles outside of Albuquerque, we arrived at our Holiday Inn about 7:30pm.
After having dinner at the hotel restaurant, we turned in for the night. We want to get an early start tomorrow.
More from Trinity Site tomorrow…
Road Trip !!!
About noon we headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings for a lunch of hot wings and potato wedges. I really like their Mango Habanero sauce, but I wish it was hotter. I had them combine the Mango Habanero, and Blazin’ which is their hottest, but it wasn’t that much hotter and it lost the sweetness of the mango. Oh well.
We also checked out the Lucky Star Chinese Buffet next door. We had seen it when we ate at BWW with Nick and Terry. It looks pretty good, so we’ll probably try it out when we get back from New Mexico. Maybe we will finally fulfilled our quest to locate a good Chinese buffet in Las Vegas.
Coming home we stopped off at Sam’s Club for some supplies, and then Lowe’s to return some toilet parts that I didn’t need.
But the real news is our upcoming road trip tomorrow to check off something on my bucket list.
Twice a year, on the first Saturdays in April and October, White Sands Missile Range opens public access to Trinity Site,
Trinity Site is where the first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945 at 5:29:45 am. I spend a good bit of time at While Sands Missile Range back in the 80’s and I always wanted to visit the site. But the open house never coincided with my schedule.
But we’re still in Las Vegas which is close enough to make the drive. It’s about 660 miles one way to the site, which is about 30 miles east of San Antonio, NM, which is about 65 miles south of Albuquerque. We’ll leave Vegas tomorrow morning about 8am and spend the night in Albuquerque.
Then Saturday morning, we plan on driving down to San Antonio and then out to Stallion Gate about 12 miles east. The gate will be open from 8am to 2pm for visitors to the site. Then it’s about 17 miles out to the site.
I mentioned yesterday that Tuesday night we went back to the Fremont Street Experience with Nick and Terry. It was their last night here and we wanted to the Don McLean/American Pie tribute again, and also see the Queen and KISS shows that we didn’t see the first night.
As before the shows were fantastic. Here’s a couple of sample videos.
Remember this screen is 90 feet high, 100 feet wide, and 1500 feet long.
(Warning: These videos are about 30MB in size)
And here are some more pictures. You can click on the following pics for larger versions.
And here is a picture of our good friends Nick and Terry Russell.
And no, we’re not long-lost brothers.
More tomorrow from Albuquerque…
