Karen and Kurt 1st Year if Retirement and Travel. More Adventure Awaits....

Grand Teton National Park July 2021 Smoke and Heat during the complete visit to some degree...

 

Mountains of the Imagination

Rising above a scene rich with extraordinary wildlife, pristine lakes, and alpine terrain, the Teton Range stands as a monument to the people who fought to protect it. These are mountains of the imagination. Mountains that led to the creation of Grand Teton National Park where you can explore over two hundred miles of trails, float the Snake River, and enjoy the serenity of this remarkable place.

Smoke from the Western wildfires has prompted officials in Montana to issue air quality warnings in worst air quality concentrations occurring in the southern half of the state, south of the I-90 corridor. Air quality has worsened this morning, and will likely continue to worsen through Tuesday," Montana Department of Environmental Quality announced in a news release.The department issued an air quality alert for Beaverhead, Carbon, Gallatin, Lewis and Clark, Madison, Missoula, Park, Pondera, Powder River, Powell, Ravalli and Sweet Grass counties. The state has 56 counties.

The heat is also an issue for residents. About 1.1 million people are under excessive heat warnings in parts of Montana -- and Idaho, Oregon, and Wyoming -- but most warnings will end by Tuesday.

July 26th Smoke. Complete blocking of the mountains and the Snake River Valley. 
Not a good time to be taking photographs.

First day with winds and clouds

Cleaned up the best I can with Haze Filter and Photoshop.

Arco, Idaho First City to be Powered by Nuclear Power and Atomic City, Idaho... Strange

ARCO AND ATOMIC CITY

In 1955, tiny Arco won fame as the world’s first nuclear-powered city. Today, it mainly serves as a jumping-off point for excursions into the nearby Craters of the Moon National Monument. Arco is one of Idaho’s strangest little towns, although nearby Atomic City manages to be even stranger. And littler.

Besides the lava-scorched earth to the south and a range of mountains to the north which include both Idaho’s highest peak (Mt. Borah) and its most awesomely-named (Appendicitis Hill) the most striking feature of Arco is its “Hill of Numbers”. For decades, the senior classes of the local high school have been decorating the nearest mountain with the last two digits of their graduation year. Graffiti on a grand scale.

Arco’s story has been tied to nuclear power ever since our country started experimenting with it. The reason that the government chose this corner of eastern Idaho as one of its nuclear sandboxes is fairly self-evident. Remote and sparsely-populated, Arco is the kind of place that a nuclear accident might go unnoticed. Or at least under-reported. Case in point: did you know that the USA’s only fatal nuclear accident occurred in Arco, Idaho? In 1961, there was a core meltdown in the National Reactor Testing Station which killed three servicemen. [Uncle Sam clutches his chest in mock concern… “Oh, you didn’t know about that?”]

BOGIAD

Thirty miles to the southeast, Atomic City is even more closely associated to nuclear power than Arco. A ghost-town for all intents and purposes, Atomic City still clings to life with a bustling population of 29. We cruised slowly down the town’s only street and were vaguely creeped out. Although we didn’t see a soul, I was certain that radiation-scarred monsters were watching us hungrily from behind curtained windows, and refused to get out of the car. Jürgen chanced it, for a picture of a trailer that had been designed to look like a boombox.

Jürgen, boom-box trailers are how the mutants lure you in!

Close by Atomic City is the Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I), a nuclear plant decommissioned in 1964 and today designated as a National Historic Landmark. The world’s first atomic-powered electricity was generated here and, during the summer, you can tour the interior of the plant

We contented ourselves with examining the prototype reactors from the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project. This attempt to build nuclear-powered was a failure, abandoned in 1953, but it left behind some marvelous pieces of engineering to admire.

Idaho National Laboratory

INL is the nation’s lead laboratory for nuclear energy research, development, demonstration and deployment and we are engaged in the mission of ensuring the nation’s energy security with safe, competitive and sustainable energy systems and unique national and homeland security capabilities.​​

INL is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s complex of national laboratories. The laboratory performs work in each of the strategic goal areas of DOE: energy, national security, science and environment.INL is managed by Battelle Energy Alliance for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy.​

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INL-The 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) site is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Idaho Falls and includes the Idaho National Laboratory. The lab area sits atop the Lake Erie-sized Snake River Plain Aquifer, which started becoming contaminated from the nuclear site in 1952, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report released last year.

The Devil Boat

Sometimes called "The Devil Boat" prompted by a quote from Revelations Chapter 13: "And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea . . . Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is 666."

USS Hawkbill was built by Mare Island Naval Shipyard and launched on April 12, 1969. She is a Sturgeon (637) Class Fast Attack Submarine. Length is 292 feet; beam is 32 feet, displacement is 4060 tons; crew is 120 men. The last of the Sturgeons, she officially was decommissioned 3/15/2000 and was scrapped soon thereafter. The sail was shipped to the Idaho Science Center in Arco, Idaho to be part of a museum.

Arco, Idaho Map showing Nuclear Waste Site and Craters of the Moon National Monument from Arco.

Pickles diner in Arco, good food.

Idaho National Laboratory - Wikipedia

The Reactor 
 

Craters of the Moon National Monument, Arco, Idaho

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is a U.S. national monument and national preserve in the Snake River Plain in central Idaho. It is along US 20 (concurrent with US 93 and US 26), between the small towns of Arco and Carey, at an average elevation of 5,900 feet (1,800 m) above sea level. The protected area's features are volcanic and represent one of the best-preserved flood basalt areas in the continental United States.

The Monument was established on May 2, 1924. In November 2000, a presidential proclamation by President Clinton greatly expanded the Monument area. The 410,000-acre National Park Service portions of the expanded Monument were designated as Craters of the Moon National Preserve in August 2002.^[1] It spreads across Blaine, Butte, Lincoln, Minidoka, and Power counties. The area is managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The Monument and Preserve encompass three major lava fields and about 400 square miles (1,000 km²) of sagebrush steppe grasslands to cover a total area of 1,117 square miles (2,893 km²). The Monument alone covers 343,000 acres (139,000 ha).^[ All three lava fields lie along the Great Rift of Idaho, with some of the best examples of open rift cracks in the world, including the deepest known on Earth at 800 feet (240 m). There are excellent examples of almost every variety of basaltic lava, as well as tree molds (cavities left by lava-incinerated trees), lava tubes (a type of cave), and many other volcanic

 features.

 

The Cascade Locks Marine Park is the home port for the Sternwheeler Columbia Gorge. The Sternwheeler is owned by the Port of Cascade Locks and operated by the Portland Spirit. Sightseeing cruises on the Columbia River depart from the Cascade Locks Marine Park several times per day, May through October. Guests can enjoy memorable one or two hour narrated sightseeing excursions, weekend champagne brunch cruises, dinner cruises, and a variety of special event and holiday cruises.

Built in Hood River, Oregon by Nichols Boat Works and launched in 1983, our authentic triple-decker paddle wheeler provides 360 degrees of breathtaking vistas.