Trinity Site

This is by and far the post restrictive post I've ever done, but I feel it is necessary to pay homage to this awesome nook of New Mexico. Twice a year, White Sands Missile Range opens its barbed wire gates and allows guest into the super-large testing site to see the Trinity Site. The site is confusing if you don't understand it, because you're driving for about an hour through miles upon miles of vast open desert, to find another several sections of barbed wire, then barbed wire fencing within the other fencing and you feel like you're in an outtake of "The X Files" before you realize there's a big old RADIOACTIVE sign every time you turn your head. You've reached your destination. Park the car, just don't roll around in the rocks or do something stupid. The Trinity Site is ground zero where on July 16, 1945, about a month before the rest of the world witnessed the power, the Army tested a nuclear weapon. Now it's a desert that's fenced in with a lava obelisk off center where in 1945 a 100 foot wooden tower stood and the bomb dropped marking the birth site of the Atomic Age. Around the perimeter there is information about the bomb and the personnel that worked on it from scientists in white lab coats to guys in fatigues. It might not sound like much, but it's an unbelievable collection of power that remains to be controversial. About a mile from that site is the "Lab" that was a usurped farm house where they completed the process of making the bomb and gingerly brought it the mile or so down the road. Going in there is like going back in time. The house was rebuilt, but wall paper from salvaged bits of wall are hanging along with pictures of the original family and World War II era GIs enjoying downtime that complicated summer. To understand what those GIs were going through is difficult but necessary for the complete experience. The war in Europe has essentially ended and was a humanitarian mission of sorts and their uniform bearing brothers in the Pacific were fighting a tough enemy. As for the men on the ranch, they were pulled out of essentially daily life and placed on this ranch for assistance. To put the level of secrecy in this whole operation into a picture, if a child was born to one of these GIs wives, that child has a birth certificate that they were born at a PO Box in New Mexico. Talk about uniquely identifiable information. Their "clean room" simply has a reminder to wipe feet before entering. Today you scrub under nails for access to a clean room. They swam in a water resiviore and played polo in an area that was soon to become (and today remains) highly radioactive. Difficult to get to, pretty much. Dangerous to your health, not at all (the radiation you're exposed to is the same as if you were on a flight from New York to California). A lot of sand, yep, but that sand saw the birth of a new era and the sand at Wildwood (NJ) can't say that.

Albuquerque, NM

Back from a vacation...GAH get it!!! Because this is a travel writing blog???

I'll stick to dorkiness compared to humor.

Last month (and next week too for that matter) Albuquerque became our destination for work travel. It was a brutal schedule, travel one day, meeting one WHOLE day, and travel back, but I worked in a couple of really cool sites out there.

When I found out I was going out there, I found the Museum of Nuclear Science and History and my attention was held hostage on the idea of going there. Until Friday, we hadn't done much as a group outside of going to Old City, which had this great old Mission which currently serves as a convent. From a historian perspective, it was great to see a building that spanned three centuries still used for its (somewhat intended) use. We had dinner in this great old place, nice three food thick walls, and a tree literally growing in the middle of the dining room. Literally "How about some sopatilla's to finish out your meal? OH I just RAN INTO THAT TREE!" Ok, so it was actually in a corner, but the food wasn't that great, atmosphere, great, sangria, some of the best I've had.

There in was our time in old city. No more fun til Friday :(.

First stop Friday was the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, which met expectations but didn't exactly exceed them. I think the problem became that so much of it was so sciency it was well beyond my area of expertise. So noted...study up before hitting up such a niche museum. However, that was only about half of the museum. The other half of the museum led through a standard history of nuclear development. It incorporated the countries that had nuclear programs, and created a sense of urgency that if we didn't make "the bomb" someone else with much more sinister intents would have done it first.

The museum did a fine job of recreating the lives of those military men that developed the weapon, which personal lives and professional lives intermingled in this forever top-secret lifestyle. Every aspect of live, including child birth, had some small aspect of the seriousness of nuclear science. Working where I work, and being where I've been (after all, I am a History Geek) I've seen my fair share of shells and bombs, but seeing these nuclear bombs, in cast version, for the first time enabled me to understand the sheer mass of power behind the relatively small size of the bombs. The museum beautifully segues into the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, covering the major bases of Nuclear History.

There are a lot of changes going on in the museum, and you actually have the opportunity to walk around the action. For lack of a better phrase they seem to be making a parking lot of old airplanes. Because it is in the building phases, you can get right under the airplane, and get closer than I've ever gotten to a plane.

Next up was Petroglyph National Park across the city. Just to set the stage, this History Geek moonlighter, was at slightly less than a mile above sea level, and had a slightly crazy night before. When I went to the visitor center and they told me of my options for getting around (everything was very clearly marked on the roads) and I settled on the shortest walk and maybe the second walk if time allowed. The first walk was a joke, and it was done in less than five minutes. So I walked around and went to the second walk.

Bad. Idea.

Probably the combination of a slight hangover and the thin air was not good for very mild climbing, I could have spent hours out there but poor decisions the night before made that a not too intelligent option. None the less, the only thing I had on my plate the rest of the day was making sure I got to the airport and close to the right gate. Taking pictures up on Petroglyph was absolutely fantastic and I hope to get back up there.

Next up on my ABQ to visit is probably some of the Indian museums, however this next trip will be more complicated then the last. But I'm not done going out there. There's much more of the wild west for this geek to discover.