Dumping Grounds

Today’s entry (quite possibly the last while on the road, the only thing planned tomorrow is Carlsbad Caverns and then the drive back to Texas) is quite short, but heavy on â??Geek Appealâ?

First stop today was at the VLA (Very Large Array) in New Mexico. For the non-geek among you, the VLA is a set of 27 radio telescopes that all work in concert to do extremely detailed radio astronomy work. Many of you may have seen it in the movie â??Contact.â? (Strangely enough, the VLA is not used for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence [SETI] at all.) The telescopes move along tracks, and have a number of different configurations. They can be quite close together, like they were in the movie, or quite far apart, like they were today. Therefore, no dramatic shots of all the disks lined up in a single frame.

Next stop on the geek tour today was a ghost town. The Kelley mining town is mostly gone, but a few facilities are still recognizable, such as the smelting area, and a conveyer that brought ore out of the mine itself. What can I say about a ghost town? It was all broken down, and I took a lot of pictures of busted stuff.

Now for those of you who are thinking, â??A ghost town isn’t all that geeky, how can you say this was a total geek day?â? You have not seen the next two stops…

First up? The Trinity Site. Yep, that’s right, the spot where the nuclear age started. The location of the very first test of an atomic weapon. This site is part of the White Sands Missile range today, and ground zero is only open to the public two days a year (as we were informed by a fairly nice guard as we tried to drive right up to the missile site entry gate). So, I got close, but not close enough to get a nice dose of radiation. A little shop right up the road was selling Trinitite (the glass that was formed by the explosion at ground zero… I have no idea how they got it, or if it’s authentic) Let’s just say I would not want to carry any of that stuff in my jeans pocket.

If you look at where we were on a map, and the direction we seemed to be headed, the last stop on the geek tour was obvious… Roswell, New Mexico. The city that was host to a (rumored) alien space craft crash in 1947. Let’s just say that Roswell was much, much more tame than I expected, and in that sense, disappointing. I was hoping to see alien signs everywhere, and people running around with tinfoil hats. Nothing of the sort, and it was about 95%, well, normal. The remaining 5% was a little odd, but nowhere near the level of strange I expected.

Headed back to Dallas tomorrow, see everyone soon.

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