Arco Idaho

We headed to Arco to see the first nuclear breeder reactor in the world. ERB-1 was the first experimental atomic reactor to successfully generate electrical power. Established in 1951 it was the source of early atomic energy knowledge in the US.

While very interesting, it was amazing just how rudimentary it was. The reactor was nothing but a concrete silo where Uranium 235 was allowed to irradiate (throw neutrons at) some inert Uranium 238, which absorbed the U 235 neutrons, and thereby convert it into Plutonium 239. Plutonium 239 can be used as either fuel rods for similar nuclear reactors, or can be used for weapons production.

The robotic arms in this concrete case were used to handle the fuel that would enter the reactor. The windows were filed with a mineral oil which prevented the radiation from escaping while still allowing the workers to see what they were doing with the arms. Each such window cost about $5 million to have manufactured.

This common bank vault was used to store the Plutonium that was created by the interaction of the U 235 and U 238 in the breeder reactor. While not very sophisticated, it did the job of keeping the very potentially dangerous material under wraps.

At 1:50 PM on December 20, 1951, the reactor created enough electrical power to light 4 200-watt lightbulbs. Having done this, it became the world’s first electricity generating nuclear power plant. It later generated enough electrical power to run everything in the building.

When the lighting was successful, all the engineers in ERB-1 decided to memorialize the event by carving their names into the wall. Well, of course, this was 1951, so only the male engineers were allowed to carve their names. One interesting misogynistic fact is that the bottom name on the etching, which has been preserved, is that of the janitor. The male janitor could inscribe, but the female engineers could not. Ward Clever might approve, but I suspect June might not.

ERB-1 was established long before the current proliferation of computing. But even then, the government was sufficiently concerned about outside interference in the operation of nuclear reactors that all equipment in the facility were analog switches and analog dials. Essentially, my phone is 1,000 times more powerful than the equipment used to managed this amazing operation!

On July 17, 1955, EBR-1 made another milestone in atomic power generation. For about an hour, ERB-1 provided power to the entire town of Arco, making Arco the first city in the world to be powered by atomic electrical generation. We also learned that ERB-1 and its successors created the Plutonium that was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki Japan, and also created the fuel used to power the Voyager rockets into deep space, where they are still functioning today.

Adjacent to the site of EBR-1 was the town of Midway Idaho, named because it was about halfway between Blackfoot Idaho and Arco Idaho. Hoping to lure the workforce from ERB-1 to live and shop in their community, in 1950 they changed the towns name officially to Atomic City.

Well, the ploy didn’t work. Despite its proximity, the workforce of ERB-1 never converged on Atomic City. Today it is a town with an official population of 29. It has one bar, the Atomic Bar, which we visited and engaged in conversation with about 25% of all the town’s inhabitants – oh, yeah, and their favorite Schnauzer Teddy.

We hoofed it down to Blackfoot to tour the Idaho Potato Museum. We learned that Idaho produces a third of the nation’s potatoes every year. We also saw a video that gave us the poop on how McDonalds makes their fries taste so great – they precook them a bit before freezing and sending them to their stores, and they dip them in a sugar solution to add both to their crispness and flavor.

Much of the potato crop in Idaho is Russets. In the late 1800’s, Luther Burbank developed the Burbank Russet Potato, that was resistant to the blight that brought about the great Irish and European potato famines that killed millions. The success of the variety made it a staple worldwide. This was a potato actually autographed by Dan Quayle since he did not know how to spell potato - he added an "e" at the end.

At the museum, we learned that while the roots (potatoes are tubers that grow underground at the base of the plant) are delicious, the flowers of the potato plant are actually poisonous. As a result, in England the Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diets condemned potatoes. That is where the nickname “spud” came from. Not far out of town we saw field upon field of Russets growing.

When they are harvested, they can be stored in bunkers or potato crypts where the cool and

the humidity combine to essentially arrest their decay. As a result of this, they can be stored in these bunkers for several months and still show up at store shelves as good as if they were just dug up. That is why potatoes are pretty much available year-round.

Finally, we paid a visit to Craters of the Moon National Monument. Established by Calvin Coolidge in 1924, the park is jointly managed by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. We hiked all over the park and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

We have been to many volcanic parks and monuments, and this was among the better. Many of the features of the monument we had seen before, but the ribbon like flows of lava we saw here were unlike any we had seen before. The monument was well worth the visit.

Arco has an interesting tradition, made possible by the local terrain. When kids graduate from high school here, its traditional that they spray paint the year of their graduation into the bluffs overlooking the town. In some way it looks a bit trashy, but in other ways it looks pretty cool.

Talk to you soon!

Other Jackson stuff

We ended up doing a lot in Jackson. We hiked in the Bridger-Teton National Forest above the Virginian RV Park where we stayed and also watched the main event.

From up on the side of the mountain we could see where we were parked, and could pretty much see all of Jackson. Jackson is an all cowboy town, with wooden sidewalks, cowboy bars, and oodles of gift shops. We did manage to scare up at least one eclipse souvenir, and constantly bumped into other Eclipsters as we strolled the boardwalks.

One day we floated for a couple of hours on the famous Snake River. Interestingly, the Snake is where Evel Knievel attempted is disastrous jump over Hells Canyon back on September 8, 1974. We found that interesting as we had been to seek Evel’s grave when we were back in Butte Montana where he was born.

We took a dinner cruise on Jackson Lake, the second largest lake in Wyoming, at the base of the Grand Teton mountain range. We stopped at Elk Island and had a very nice steak and trout dinner in the shadow of the Tetons. The weather was spectacular so the cruise was quite pleasant, with magnificent views of the majestic peaks. What a way to cap off a special visit to Jackson.

An interesting effect I forgot to mention was how the trees would act as a camera obscura during the solar eclipse. The small spaces between the leaves on the trees would cast a shadow of the eclipse below. If you placed an object below any tree that was fairly dense with leaves, you got hundreds of images of the crescent of the sun partially obscured by the moon. How cool is that!

While a bit blurry, here is an idea of just how dark it got during the 2 minutes of totality. You can just make out the lights pouring through the windows of Colectiva as it if were midnight!

On a recommendation from my brother Jerry, who has spent a lot of time in Jackson managing the Boot Barn store here, we visited the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. It was fun to “saddle up” at the bar and feel like a cowboy. The Woman said the fried pickles and mozzarella sticks weren’t very good, but the Elk burger I had was a real treat!

Talk to you soon!

The main event

The day came with a bit of cloud cover as the crew of amateur astronomers began setting up the site. But in unbelievable fashion, the clouds quickly moved off and the deep blue, unobstructed sky showed itself ready for what was to come.

The buffet bar was set up well in advance with all the stellar themed items.  Eclipse cabernet, Lunar chardonnay, Going to the Sun IPA, Moon Pies – pretty much everything commercially marketed in food and beverage that had a stellar theme or name.

The motor homes providing the shade for the eclipse observers were decked out with star themed stickies and other themed stuff. After the telescope complex was set up and the themed party goods were put out, folk from all over the RV Park came by to get a peek at the approaching main event.

As the moon began passing over the sun, the Eclipsters (term coined by Teresita herself) donned their NASA approved sun glasses and prepared for the show.

Even Kona decided to get in on the fun.

But when the 2 minutes of totality arrived, it was surprisingly almost a religious or spiritual experience. The temperature dropped easily 25-130 degrees, and the RV Park became dark – it seemed like it was the middle of the night. The corona of the sun surrounding the black of the moon was awesome.

The astronomer experts in the group were mumbling a bit – they were disappointed about not having seen the “diamond” at the start of the 2 minutes of totality. Well, they soon became elated when near the end of the totality, the diamond appeared – where the ring of the corona around the moon thins, with a sparkle in one spot of the corona that results in the clear image of a sparking diamond ring!

As the totality commenced, as huge cheer occurred In the RV Park – it was so loud it even drowned out the Bose radio for a bit. We could also hear the echo of the cheers that went out all over Jackson. What an event!

Talk to you soon!

Jackson

We are eagerly awaiting the once in a lifetime eclipse. Again, thanks to Ron and Teresa, we don’t have to worry about anything! People selling dry camping in their yard at $200 a night – people selling solar glasses at $20 a pair – people renting access to telescopes at all kinds of crazy pricing – we can avoid it all – are settled in well before the crazy road jams, and out long after.

Which left us more than enough time to visit the Jackson Golf and Tennis club in the shadow of the Grand Tetons, and adjacent to the National Park – bonus!

Talk to you soon!

Way to the Eclipse

Before leaving Butte, we catered to the Woman’s national trail fixation one more time. While Our Lady of the Rockies rests on the Continental Divide, we could not locate the Continental Divide Trail when we visited. So, we googled and found where the CDT crossed US Highway 2, and made a special trip. While it was only three rugged miles, it still gave the Woman a fix for a bit.

I don’t know what made me look, but the Peter Wolf Toth SWhispering Giant in Idaho happened to be in Idaho Falls, about half an hour from where we spent the night. So, I plugged what I knew about its location into Brenda, and lo and behold, she took us right there! We hope to capture another couple before we get back to Vegas.

The Eclipse craze is everywhere. Even on Friday out in the boonies of Idaho, there are highway signs warning folk about expecting traffic on Monday, and maybe a few days before and after.

Since our friends Ron and Teresa have been diligently planning this for two years, we don’t have to succumb to all the price gouging that seems to be accompanying the craze. Not only will it cost you $20 just to park in this hay field on Monday, but if you want a “Moon Sofa” (a bale of hay to sit on), that will be another $20 – sheesh!

Talk to you soon!

Butte

On the way to Butte we stumbled across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site. In 1857 John Grant began laying out a trading post in Deer Lodge Montana to carry on his trade he had learned from his father, a trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company in Alberta. But he was already too late – fur hunting was all but played out by that time, so he began rounding up open range cattle to grow and sell to all the miners moving into the area. He began building in 1862, and by 1868 was ready to move on. He sold the home and land to Conrad Kohrs, a local butcher that had become wealthy getting the cattle raised by Grant ready for the miners.

For 150 years this ranch has had only the two owners. Heirs of Conrad Kohrs eventually sold the ranch to the Park Service when their last relative died who was living in the home. Because of that, the home, with all its furnishings, is just like it looked at the turn of the century. The NPS operates it as an insight for Americans into what open range ranching was like before the influx of people in the early 1900’s. We thoroughly enjoyed our tour of the home and the other ranch features.

In Butte, we were reminded about the namesake of Clark County Nevada. William Andrews Clark amassed a huge number of claims on local silver mines, making him a very rich man. At one point, he owned nearly half the silver claims in the area. However, that wasn’t what eventually made him the richest man in the country at the turn of the century. That was caused by the dense presence of copper ore in his mines, and with the advent of the Industrial Age and the spread of electricity, the price of copper ore went through the roof.

His 34-room mansion built here in 1884 was austere by Clark’s standards, but was the most opulent home in Butte at the time. Given his wealth source, he naturally became the promoter of the local electrical utility, and his home was wired for electricity the day it was built. Our first home in St. Paul was built in 1913, and was not wired for electricity until long after it was built – the gas pipes were still sticking out of our walls that we often used as hooks for wall hangings.

There are 3 Clark homes in Butte. In 1898 William Clark built a home for his son, Charles, as a wedding gift. The standard 3 story mansion with a ballroom taking up the bulk of the 3^rd floor, looks more like a European castle than a Victorian mansion.

The third home was another wedding gift for a child. Peter Clark got a home a bit less opulent than his brother Charles, but still impressive. It turns out that one of Clark’s business ventures resulted in the blossoming of Las Vegas. Despite the transcontinental railroad being available to transport his ore, it stopped in every small town along the way, and took too long. Clark built his own railroad that would carry his ore to its destinations in the East with essentially no stops. However, because of its route, it lacked the support services, even as basic as water. The midpoint of one of the stretches without services fell in Las Vegas, where Clark’s investments brought people galore.

We visited the Dumas Brothel, allegedly the bordello operating continuously the longest in the US. Founded in 1890 to support the exploding mining workforce, the Dumas operated continuously until the closing of the Berkeley Pit on Earth Day in 1982. Despite the fact that prostitution was never legal in the state of Montana, the bordello operated continuously for nearly 100 years.

Apparently, the Red-Light District in Butte covered two complete square blocks during the mining times. The Dumas alone had 34 cribs in which the ladies did their work. Allegedly the Madame would get 60% of the monies paid by the customers to cover the cost of supplying the building, the graft payments to the local police and politicians, and other protection. 40% of what the customer paid went to the lady performing the services.

The building has deteriorated significantly. But even without that impact, this would have been a very seedy feeling location. While the newspaper articles and personal recollections documented here would suggest this was a very upscale setting, it certainly didn’t feel that way to us. However, it was still very interesting.

We visited Our Lady of the Rockies. Conceived as a tribute to his wife with cancer, Bob O’Bill promised the Virgin Mary that he would build a statue of her in his yard if his wife recovered. When she did, he started this project which ended up in being the 4^th tallest statue in the US. Only 4 feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty, had they thought about it, I am sure they would have made her 5 feet taller.

Essentially on the Continental Divide, the 90-foot-tall statue hangs 3,500 hundred feet above Butte, and 8,500 feet above sea level. Begun in 1979, Our Lady was finally completed on December 17, 1985. The views of her from Butte are cool. But the views from her of the Butte valley are stunning!

We learned that due to the mining, Butte was a true melting pot of the world, where anyone with mining skills were welcome. Because of this, all nationalities were welcome, as well as cultural beliefs. This Serbian church was erected in the late 1800’s – sadly it was not open the days we were here.

This Jewish orthodox synagogue sat among the Irish Catholic, Protes

tant, Chinese and other ethnic worshiping places. Apparently, much of the renewed ethnic conflict we are seeing in the early days of the Trump presidency were never present in the Butte mining days.

We visited one site of perhaps the most polluted US industrial byproducts. As I mentioned, mining operations in the Berkeley Pit resumed until 1982 when its operators determined they could not profit by further operations. They petitioned the EPA asking to turn off the pumps that kept the pit dry of ground water. The EPA agreed, and on Earth Day in 1982, they turned off the pumps. Since then, the water in the pit has risen about one foot per month, the heavy metal laden acidic water will reach the water tables in Butte in the next 5-10 years.

The water in the pit is so toxic that when birds land on it,

they may not ever leave. On November 30, 2016, a weather inversion forced 20,000 Canadian geese to land on the water at Berkeley Pit. When they left, only about 16,0000 were able to take off. The rest never made it, due to the toxicity of the water. Locals claim the US Government asserts they have the issue under control, but few of the locals actually believe it.

We learned that motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel was born in Butte. Allegedly, when incarcerated in the Butte jail for inebriation, Robert Knievel happened to be there when another chap, Awful Knofel, happened to be in the drunk tank as well. When a joking officer told locals he’d had his hands full the night before with “Awful Knofel and Evel Knievel”, the nickname stuck for the rest of his life. We visited his gravesite at Mountainview Cemetery in Butte. While we were there, a Harley rider came up to pay his respects as well – how fitting.

Now to make our way to Jackson Wyoming for the Eclipse – you maybe have heard something about it lately.

Talk to you soon!