Excellent Adventure – Page 6 – Jake & Eddie’s Excellent Adventure 😎🐶

Ventura Highway

We woke to a spectacular sunrise in the desert before starting our journey. We would skirt north of the City of Angels through Pasadena and Burbank / Hollywood before finally popping out on the coast at Ventura. It was a Saturday and we left early to beat the infamous SoCal traffic. Things got progressively thicker as we neared the coast. Seems like everyone was headed to the beach!

I vividly remember one of the first times I drove 101 South from Santa Maria to Los Angles. Around Ventura, the west side of the highway falls away exposing a fantastic vista of the Pacific.

Ventura highway in the sunshine
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger
Than moonshine
Some 70s Yacht Rock Band

It wasn’t quite the same in fog and heavy traffic – but nearly 50 years later I had returned.

The typical weather pattern for SoCal is early morning clouds from the cool Pacific that burn off by noon. We stopped at a 6-mile stretch of beach right along the coast where you can boondocks camp (if you get an early enough reservation, I learned!). There were a lot of surfers and billion-dollar homes on the ocean.

As I drove into the mountains from Santa Barbara toward San Marcos Pass it all came back to me! When I first was living here I spent some time in the area with the people I was diving with. I fell in love quickly with California – there really is no place like it with its golden hue. You could see that it had rained a lot because everything was green. Later some of it will dry out and catch fire. Neverending cycle for Califonia.

Green California – I remember seeing this when I moved here around the same time of year. It all drys out in the Summer and turns a beautiful gold before catching fire!

We arrived at the Avila Beach KOA late in the afternoon. It is a stone’s throw from the beach and about 10 miles from San Luis Obispo. When we got there it was packed – the sites were full (unlike all the others so far) and jammed very close together.

After Sunday though it cleared out with less than half the sites full. The campgrounds suffered bad flooding from all the rain and winter weather but seemed in good repair. The pool had just been recently repaired and reopened.

Very close to the campground was the Bob Jones trail. This ran about 4 miles to the beach and was very popular. We walked part of it a couple of times. The first part has some interesting rock formations and there are some very large live oak trees precariously growing out of rock.

We drove the Avila Beach – again – it all came back to me. I remember diving on the oil pier for Halibut that first summer I got here. Lots of great memories! There is an off-lead dog beach just north of that that we visited. I read an article a couple of days earlier that the average home price in Avila Beach was $1.9M. A really far cry from the sleepy little town I barely remember when I lived here.

Shell Beach

My girlfriend had hooked up with the local dive shop before I got there. Honestly, the guy that ran the store wanted to get into her pants. That’s another story 🤣. They were up for diving though! These guys were hardcore spearfishermen and would go diving any hour of the day or night. We must have dove a dozen spots that summer including diving in the surf at Pismo Beach for clams! The shop they worked at was Dive West.

⁨Margo Dodd Park⁩ where we used to teach scuba diving. We would stage the exercises from the flatter rock on the left. There were seals everywhere and often they would come in for a closer look!

I also helped them teach classes. Shell Beach was our teaching spot. They were hardcore about teaching too. All of their time in the water was in the ocean rather than a pool. Their philosophy was that you needed to be able to handle the rigors of Pacific diving. This means rocks, an unbelievably strong tidal surge at times, wearing a bulky wetsuit (and climbing stairs!), and hand-numbing cold. It can be a bit overwhelming for some. They would also let you take as many classes as needed to become certified.

The area is now littered with million-dollar homes. Seems like Teslas are as common as old VW Beetles back in the day 😆.

Pismo Beach

Pismo Beach itself has blown up into a destination for everyone. Hotels, restaurants, and t-shirt shops are everywhere. Plenty of places to get rid of those cumbersome wads of cash 💰.

One of the dives I went on with my new dive buddies was Pismo Beach. Here’s the picture: On a calm day you dive out in the surf, maybe 6 feet underwater. You take out your dive knife and poke around in the sand until you hit something. That would be the clam. Dig it up and stick it in a bag. All the time the surge is moving you back and forth!

I had some yummy clam chowder though at one of the recommended restaurants near the pier. It was delicious but I seriously doubt it had any Pismo Beach clam in it!

Cal Poly

I seriously had no clue what I wanted to do when I graduated from high school. I had applied (and been accepted) at Florida State in their chemistry program. That’s how clueless I was because chemistry is not my thing! My Dad was big on going to the local community college and then transferring to a four-year school. I was able to get some CLEP credit and cut the time required at the community college to three semesters.

I was staying in Boston with my friend Billy the summer after graduation. My girlfriend calls to tell me her parents are moving to California. She also told me there is a great college called Cal Poly nearby. We decided to go to community college for 1 1/2 years and then move to California to finish at this cool school Cal Poly. I finally had a plan!

It ended up taking me another semester but I finally moved to Santa Maria in June of 1975. One of the first things I did was go to Cal Poly. I went to the admissions office to talk to someone. On the wall was a rack full of brochures about the various programs they had. I grabbed a bunch and took a seat to look through them.

I read the one for the Mechanical Engineering program. It said that Mechanical Engineers design and build stuff like cars, airplanes, and nuclear power plants. That’s all it took. I loved building stuff and was fascinated by how things worked.

Serendipity struck once again. it turns out that because I was an out-of-state resident I got a slot that was open for the Winter quarter. I started in January 1976. For the next 2 1/2 years I became completely absorbed in learning engineering. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. I would study for hours. I drank so much coffee I would periodically hallucinate! I finally found something I was good at.

The Mechanical Engineering building was where everyone hung out. The department project was a Baja Dunebuggy that they would compete against other schools. More recently it has been solar-powered personal vehicles.

Old Mechanical Engineering building. I used to hang out there between classes.

While I was going to school, the big state power supplier Pacific Gas & Electric was building a nuclear power plant at nearby Diablo Canyon.

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant entrance in Avila Beach. No Nukes!

They were up against a strong anti-nuclear crowd led by Jackson Browne! Little did my fellow student know but Cal Poly had a very small research reactor in the back of the mechanical engineering building!

Research Nuclear Reactor was in the rear of the ME building. It came from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. Nobody knew it was there! The water tank on the right was added after I graduated.

I tried to get into the dorms but there were no rooms available. Instead, I rented an apartment in town for the first year and a half on Toro Road. Most of the time I had a roommate. A thirty-year-old guy who had been going to school for like 8 years. I got to know the next-door neighbor John and his girlfriend Jane. The guy downstairs was an Iranian married to a Mexican woman. He made a mean shishkabob!

Toward the end of my junior year, I got to know one of the other engineering students Steve. I heard he had a room open in a house in Los Osos for next year. After a summer working in an oil field in the central valley near Fresno, I moved in there for my senior year.

We called it the Aspen because of the road it was on. It belonged to a family friend and was close to Morro Bay. It was a very cool place to spend my last year. I got so distracted I nearly didn’t graduate!

Baywood Park – The back bay of Morrow Bay

I loved living here and always thought I would move back someday. I tried to get a job in San Diego at an interesting company General Atomics but opted to move to Seattle and go to graduate school in Nuclear Engineering. By the end of the time I was there everyone in California was fleeing the state after going to shit economically. The saying was “Don’t Californicate Washington.” Too funny!

Mojave

Our first stop for the Big Kahuna is in the southern desert of California. I had spent time in Southern California in the mid-1970s while going to school up the coast in San Luis Obispo. I fled Florida in the Summer of 1975 to be with my girlfriend, who dumped me about 6 months afterward 😖.

Shuttle Discovery Palmdale California ~ 1978 — A shot of the team my Dad worked with as the first Shuttle was being built in Palmdale. Likely in 1978 before he returned to Florida.

I was then blindsided by serendipity when my parents and younger brother moved to Los Angeles only several months after I had left Florida. Rockwell transferred Dad to the area to work on the Space shuttle prototype Enterprise. They lived in Irvine for a short period of time before buying a house in Lancaster. Lancaster sits on the edge of the Mojave desert.

Mom when she lived in Califonia in the mid-1970s

I visited them many times while I was going to college. It was a reasonably short drive from San Luis Obispo to Lancaster. My brother Dave and I hung out. We made a notorious trip to Kings Canyon supposedly to do some camping. I managed to completely fuck up my Sunbeam Alpine sports car thinking I could take it off-road. I had to put my tail between my legs and ask Dad to come to get us with a towing trailer!

We crossed into California by crossing the Colorado River at Parker. This area sits south of Parker Damn. I was dumbstruck at the number of resorts and RV campgrounds along the river. The river itself was very nice with crystal clear water. Otherwise, it was 100% desert – hot and dry as a bone.

We then crossed a long, open stretch of road right through the middle of the desert. I was amazed at the sight of the mountains as we got closer to our destination. You could see a gradual rise in the sagebrush-dotted sand leading up to the mountains. Mellinia of blowing sand forming the dunes. Breathtaking!

Civilization returned as we got closer to Joshua Tree National Park. Before long it was the Califonia I remembered again. Strip malls everywhere and Jack in the Box restaurants.

The KOA here was similar to the last 3. Fairly open gravel lots with a pool and hot tub. Lots of things to keep snowbirds occupied during the winter and families year-round.

Palm Springs was a destination health resort in the early 1900s. People from all over would come to visit the spas. Together with the climate, it was looked on as a source of relief for ailments of all sorts!

This one has three different hot tubs at different temperatures. They say it is fed by natural hot mineral wells. These seem to be everywhere in this area and must be a feature of the geography.

Desert Hot Springs KOA with Mount San Jacinto in the background

The KOA sits on the northeast corner of the Coachella Valley. The valley itself is dotted with wind turbines to harness the ever-blowing desert winds. Sand is frequently blown onto the highways. The highways themselves are like a roller coaster as they follow the contours of the dunes. Big fun driving in the X6!

Coachella Valley with Mount San Jacinto in the background. Notice the wind farm faintly visible in the right-hand side of the valley in the view.

To the southwest is the stunning Mount San Jacinto. To the northwest is equally stunning Mount Georgio. Between these mountains and Joshua Tree National Park is the Coachella Valley.

Palm Spring Air Museum

A friend had told me about the Palm Springs Air Museum. Situated just outside Palm Springs, it has five hangers with aircraft from different eras from World War II to the present day. The highlight, other than having a huge selection of modern and vintage military aircraft (many of which still fly), is a tour of a B17 Flying Fortress. I had to go! This was one of my favorite airplanes of the war – bristling with guns – to fly in a bomb the shit out of the Nazis. Maybe I can get them to drop a few on Tallahassee!

I could have spent a whole day at this place. There were dozens of super knowledgeable volunteers that knew the detailed history of the different planes. The tour through the B17 was a memory to last me a lifetime (what’s left of it that is!). I would always watch WWII movies and wonder if I had what it took to do the job that ‘The Greatest’ generation did. I guess I’ll never know.

Douglass SBD Dauntless. The airbrakes on the main wind surface had holes in them and were used to control the aircraft as it essentially dropped out of the sky.

I spent quite a bit of time learning about dive bombers like this one. I watched the movie Midway several years ago and was stunned at how the pilots would dive at a 70-degree angle to drop the bombs on the Japanese ships. You can see the airbrakes on the wings of the Dauntless above used to control the plane in its ‘drop’. Until this was developed, aircraft like torpedo bombers were notoriously bad at destroying their targets. Not the dive bombers, they had a near-perfect kill record.

Lockheed Martin F-117A Nighthawk “Black Devil”

The last (and newest) hanger had the most recent acquisition – A F-117A Stealth Fighter built in utmost secrecy in the 1980s by Lockheed. It was amazing to see all of these aircraft and meet the many volunteers that work at the museum.

Joshua Tree National Park

Several people in the past had mentioned to me how much they enjoyed Joshua Tree National Park. Interesting rock formations and forests of unusual Joshua trees and other odd-looking desert plants. The rock formations are a favorite for climbers and there were many places to camp in this spectacular setting. It was about a 60-mile drive from the visitor center in the northwest part of the park to the Cottonwood entrance in the southeast.

Spectacular rock formations and desert plantlife abound in Joshua Tree National Park

We got in right at sun up and explored the park before it got too hot in the afternoon. many of the spots featured almost comically large rocks a mere 50 feet or more in height. A literal forest of huge Joshua trees – especially on the drive to view the Coachella Valley.

Joshua Trees – *Yucca brevifolia* – Native to the southwestern US and northern Mexico

The Keys View drive went west until you could gaze down into the valley below. The two snow-capped peaks of San Jacinto and San Georgio in plain sight. It was quite a view.

Keys View with Coachella Valley and Mount San Jacinto in the background

As we drove east the rock formations changed and eventually we were back in the sand dunes and desert again. The final stop was to view a Cholla Cactus Garden. These nasty-looking plants had a bad reputation for inflicting painful wounds whenever possible!

Cholla Cactus Garden – apparently universally despised by early settlers!

I only wish I was in better shape to go back and do some climbing! Quite an unusual and beautiful area.

Palm Springs

For as long as I can remember there was always Palm Springs. I guess the proximity the LA and Hollywood in particular made it a common name when I was growing up. Movie stars playing golf in the desert 🤩.

The downtown area had a Key West vibe with sidewalk bars and restaurants and lots of plan trees. They had a Walk of Fame for Hollywood types that lived there.

Sonny Bono was the mayor of Palm Springs from 1988 to 1992. He hit a tree skiing at Lake Tahoe six years later. …and the beat goes on!

Sonny Bono was the mayor of Palm Springs for a while. Then he hit a tree while skiing and that was the end of that 😵‍💫. At least he got a place on the Walk of Fame.

The Art Museum is a big thing which one would expect in a monied-town like this. Highlights include a larger-than-life Marilyn Monroe and a rather spooky pit filled with a red fault line and very weird sculptures. Like right out the incredible file Brazil.

I also noticed that local people will often say happy trials instead of goodbye. It was a bit before my time but the saying was made famous by local Palm Springs stars Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans. When I was very young, before anything else I wanted to be a cowboy. Seems like this was the place to be.

San Gorgonio Pass wind farm

This was one of the earliest wind farms built in the early 1980s. I had graduated college in mechanical engineering several years earlier and developed an interest in power generation including solar and nuclear but had not heard much about wind power. I traveled to Northern Europe in the early 2000s and saw some of the massive wind farms in the North Atlantic. Since then I have seen many on our 2021 Excellent Adventure. It was cool seeing so many close up like this in such a stunning setting.

Exactly two weeks to the day since we left Florida – tomorrow we head further west to San Luis Obispo. Almost exactly 48 years ago my life was profoundly and irrevocably changed when I escaped Florida to move there to live my dreams and seek my fortune. I had barely a clue what I was doing. If I had only known!

Fade left

We fade from south to west on the second half of the drive.

Leaving on Day 6 from Sonora we drove through the remaining part of the Hill Country into Big Bend Country. The scenery changed pretty radially and it became flatter and dryer. At one point the signs warned of an 80-mile stretch with no services.

His dog riding on the back with his goggles on! They were easily doing 80!

We saw a guy riding a big road bike with his dog strapped to the rear seat. he was wearing a pair of goggles and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the ride. We passed them several times during the day (which is common – you get to know different rigs, etc). Finally, I was able to get a photo of him as he sped out of a rest area and overtook us at 80 mph!

We arrived in Van Horn and stayed at the Wild West RV Park! Not much to write home about but everything worked and we had a quiet evening there.

Van Horn is home to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launch operations. About 25 miles up the road Jeff and his buddies fly into space on his giant flying dildo 🤣. I suspect many of the people staying in the campground worked there. I doubt very seriously that William Shatner was one of them! I passed on the opportunity to visit. Maybe next time 😎.

We woke to a clear, cold (49 F) morning and headed out on Day 7 for the westernmost end of Texas. We were within range of the Mexican border for most of the drive which took us through El Paso and the New Mexico border. El Paso was not a pretty sight from the roadway – it looked like an endless sprawl in a hot, dry desert.

We stopped for the day at our first KOA Kampground of the trip. We will be staying in them for most of the remainder of the trip. I like the consistency and convenience of going through a single booking process for hundreds of campgrounds. This one was perched on a hill overlooking Las Cruces and Mesilla toward the Guadalupe Mountian range.

We are staying next to the town of Mesilla just north of Las Cruces. The place has an interesting history. It was settled in the mid-1800s. During the Civil War, it was occupied by Confederate soldiers and was named the capital of the Confederate Republic of Arizona for a brief period. Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced to be executed in 1881 here before he escaped (only to be mysteriously shot several months later).

On our way there we stopped by the Rio Grande river at a park near Las Cruces. The riverbed was dry, affording an interesting view of the river, indeed! Jake had a blast running on the sand 🐶.

We started Day 8 out visiting Las Cruces and Mesilla before heading west to Arizona and our next stop outside of Tucson. This called for listening to Linda Ronstadt as we drove through the arid landscape! We came across several stretches of areas with bad dust storms. I am not sure I was encouraged by the roadside instructions!

…and pray there is not some idiot from Texas behind you 🤠

We ended the day in the middle of Tucson’s suburban sprawl in a huge KOA Resort. Resorts are KOA’s mini-theme park with lots of stuff for families and especially kids to do. This one had several hundred spaces and one section was covered (with a solar panel) to protect the spots below from the scorching Arizona sun ☀️. I like them because they generally have a hot tub. Unfortunately, the one here was lukewarm at best. Our spot was excellent though – Jake even had a little spot of grass he could lie in. It was hot but the low humidity and breeze made it feel a lot cooler.

Day 9 and our last overnight before our visit stop at Desert Springs and Joshua Tree National Monument in California. We drove from Tucson northwest and then made a detour to Gila Bend Arizona.

North of Tucson we went through Saguaro National Park and a stunning drive through Saguaro Cactii forests. I was stunned at how green it appeared in some spots like Pacaco Mountain.

Gila Bend Arizona

45 years ago this Summer I was traveling cross country after graduating from college. My finance Margaret and I made a round trip around the US. The last leg of our trip took us the same route I am going now except we were headed to San Diego. We were trying to get back to San Jose to get married and were making time.

Camping outside of Houston I was bitten by a bunch of ants. I had a reaction, took a bunch of Benadryl, and slept for a day. We stopped at Carlsbad Caverns. The next day we went by Alamagordo (without stopping), and made it all the way to Gila Bend. It was the beginning of August and the heat (in our non-air-conditioned Toyota) was almost too much.

Summer 1978 on my way back to California

We were basically out of money. We wanted to stay at the Best Western (now the Space Age In!) but it was too much. We opted instead for the budget strip motel down the road. We paid our money and went to the room only to discover the A/C had not been turned on! It was hotter in the room than it was outside!

Fortunately, they had a pool that was almost too hot to swim in but gave us a bit of relief. We went to take showers and left the cold water running for what seemed to be 30 minutes. The water never got any colder! Fuck it we said, and pulled the mattress off the bed and threw it in front of the A/C.

While we were going to sleep we turned the TV on and saw the weather. The hottest place in the United States that day? Gila Bend, Arizona at 117 F!

We woke up at 3 AM with our teeth chattering. While we slept the room cooled down to the point that we were now freezing! As I letter learned, once the sun goes down the desert can get quite chilly!

The next day driving into San Diego we passed dozens of cars on the side of the road with radiators boiling over as we drove over a mountain pass into San Diego. The temperature seemed like it dropped 50 degrees as we drove down towards the cool Pacific Ocean!

We stopped for the day at Salome Arizona near the Arizona-California border. It was a bit off the Interstate which gave us the chance to see the desert up close! The campgrounds were huge and mostly vacant after the snowbirds headed back north. They had a pool and a hot tub which I thoroughly enjoyed!

Day 10 – last day of our journey west – next stop California!

Midway Journey West

We’ve made it halfway on our journey west as we stop in Sonora, Texas. We traveled some 1400 miles so far averaging about 250 miles a day after our longer trip on Day 1 to Panama City.

We had a relaxing visit with Dave and Lisa and enjoyed burgers on the back deck with their wonderful view of Lisa’s butterfly heaven and the bijou. Our journey on Day 2 took us through Mobil Alabama and the dreaded I-10 tunnel. Of course, someone honked their horn endlessly and revved their engine to make sure we noticed them 🤡.

Oaklawn RV Park near Biloxi Mississippi. Not much – but convenient and everything worked.

We stayed that evening at a convenient campground near Biloxi Mississippi. Nothing to write home about but it was easy in and out with good hookups. We got our first taste of local color here, as noted on one of the resident’s pickup truck 😆.

Day 3 took us to Louisiana. Between Mississippi and Louisiana, you would have thought you were in some southern version of Las Vegas. I figure if your city didn’t have a casino you were shit out of luck. Other than that driving through the bijou areas was particularly scenic. We stopped that night in a nicer campground again located conveniently near I-10. A step up from the last place!

Day 4 started with a harrowing journey across roads that looked like they had been bombed. They were in such disrepair. About 10 miles east of the Louisiana – Texas state line the road turned to shit as they worked to repair the damage. It kept up for another 40 miles or so in Texas before getting dumped into bad traffic in Houston.

It was raining just to make life interesting. We made it to our campground in Schulenburg, Texas. The nicest place so far, although it rained hard all night into the morning.

On Day 5, we headed into the Hill Country of Texas as we drove through more crap roadways around San Antonio. The rest of the drive, however, was pleasant as the rain stopped and we finally had some scenery again (after the oil refineries around Houston!). It finally started to feel like we were in the west with good-sized hills (or are they small mountains?) with equally small trees. The temperatures started rising, and it was 90 degrees by the time we got to our campground for the evening in Sonora, Texas.

The campgrounds looked basically abandoned except for two trailers. On closer look, I noticed all the utilities looked new. WTF? Turned out the place was built by pipeline workers in service to the people of Sonora. Their town flooded several years ago, and a new set of campsites were set up for temporary housing as the residents rebuilt. Shortly after that, during the pandemic, the oil industry in this area got clobbered economically. Everyone left, leaving a nice but deserted campground. As noted, the hookups were new. The person who runs the place works during the day but was super responsive to my text messages—worked for us!

Welcome to the Wild West! Yippie-Tie-Yiyay 🤠

Excellent Adventure 2023 Begins!

Our 2023 Excellent Aventure has begun! We left at the crack of sparrow fart and had a mostly uneventful drive northwest to Brother Dave’s.

We look forward to a leisurely drive west on I-10 to Los Angeles over the next 9 days!

Leaving Valhalla – Excellent Adventure 2023 Begins!

Excellent Adventure 2022 ~ The Movie

Highlights and video from the trip together with some fooling around in GarageBand for a soundtrack.

Excellent Adventure 2022 Final

Logging 5200 miles over 35 days, we wove our way along the Appalachian mountains north, west, and south again to visit destinations on my bucket list.

We headed north out of Florida with overnights in Georgia and North Carolina. The first stop was in Virginia and Shenandoah National Park and a drive on Skyline Drive. From there we drove through the badlands of Pennsylvania visiting my old nemesis Three Mile Island Along the way. This took us through the land of legends to coastal Maine.

We visited Acadia National Park and spent some time along the coast. We traveled inland to stay one rainy day at a stunningly beautiful pond in Maine on a lot belonging to my friend Bill. We then drove across the top of New England with stops at Mount Washington, New Hampshire, and the Adirondack Mountains near Lake Placid and Whiteface Mountian. Fall colors greeted us along the way!

Driving south now we visited Watkins Glen and the famous raceway and state park there. Our new two stops were to explore my roots with stops in Pennsylvania at my father’s ancestral home in Snow Shoe and my mother’s hometown of Connellsville. Continuing south we drove through West Virginia and saw the New Gorge National Park along the way.

We ended up in Tennessee, near Knoxville, at the home of my friend Bill. We visited the Smokey Mountains and toured the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. From there I spent a day with my friend Laura in Georgia and then headed south to Panama City.

We finished up there with a great visit with my brother Dave and his family including my 10-month-old grand-nephew Theo! Back home to access the damage from Ian – fortunately not too bad.

Next trip – Excellent Adventure 2023 – The West Coast!

Babies & Butterflies 👶🏼🦋

Last stop: Panama City Florida for a week with my brother Dave and his family. Dave’s son Carl, wife Kari, and baby Theo arrived towards the end of the week.

We enjoyed Lisa’s renowned cooking and spent time in the Butterfly haven she has created in the backyard of their stunning home on the bayou.

Lisa’s Butterfly Haven in Panama City

Another great set of family memories as the Tubridy family marches on!

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Bill, Laura, and I visited some museums in Oak Ridge Tennessee. Oak Ridge is the home of the Clinton Engineer Works, now called Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Mockup of Little Boy atomic bomb at Oak Ridge National Laboratory K-25 museum.

The uranium used in the ‘Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima was made here. The effort was herculean. The world’s largest building (at that time) was built and manned to hold the hundreds of machines used to enrich the Uranium. It’s known as the K-25 site.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Called the “Top Secret” City. The K-25 site, now demolished, where uranium was enriched for the first atomic bomb in the 1940s.

There were other efforts using different enrichment techniques at other locations on the large laboratory site.

Today the Laboratory has very active programs. Especially for the production and use of neutrons for imaging and other high-tech application, as well as programs for our nuclear stockpile.

I stumbled upon a machine there which brought back some amazing experiences from my early professional work. My first job at Boeing was to test aircraft using a much more modern version of this hardware. Later I went to work for Hewlett-Packard which was making modern vibration test systems.

This is a machine to test vibration (my first job) using a Hewlett-Packard Oscillator – HP’s first product made in the early 1940s. I worked on its successors many, many years later during my time at HP in the 1980s.

In the middle with the big dial is a Hewlett-Packard Oscillator. This was a version of the original product Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard made in the garage in Palo Alto in the late 1930s. One of the first customers was Disney which used them to make the soundtrack for the movie ‘Fantasia’ during the same time period. I actually did marketing work on the successor models many years later and was directly involved in obsoleting the product line.

We also visited the American Museum of Science and Energy which had very good exhibits on some of the newer efforts of the lab as well as its history and general information on nuclear energy.

Cherokee National Forrest

Located in the Smokey Mountian area outside of Knoxville. We drove up one afternoon to check out some waterfalls and the fall color. Lots of retired guys driving their motorcycles and Corvettes on a fine sunny day!