Aliens and the Atomic Bomb

November 6, 2023 – Day 39

Today was a travel day, not a super long one because we needed to do life maintenance and to that end we were up early. I hope you’re not getting tired of sunrise photos. As photographers, we tend to dislike them. They’re all pretty and pretty gets overdone. But man, they are nice. This was taken right out the bedroom window.

Check out the vintage RV on the far left. We love seeing the older ones. Notice that it isn’t very tall. Back then they made them much shorter. This had advantages and disadvantages. Shorter is easier to store, is less affected by wind, and it should get better gas mileage. But that is probably offset by the older technology in the engine and lower ceiling. Shorter also means you have less storage space. Clifford has huge storage bays underneath the floor and quite a bit inside as well.

15 minutes later…

On the way we passed by a historic marker. Sometimes we stop at them but we primarily use them for driver changes. Those days are long gone because we’re often too big to fit and if we couldn’t fit we’d find out too late. We didn’t stop at this marker since it wasn’t time for a driver change. But we were curious so Paul got online and found out that we had just passed the Trinity site.

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. MWT (11:29:21 GMT) on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, nicknamed the “gadget”, of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Concerns about whether the complex Fat Man design would work led to a decision to conduct the first nuclear test. The code name “Trinity” was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, inspired by the poetry of John Donne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)

We found it curious that this was actually a tourist destination, a National Park Service site (NPS). It is open to the public on the first Saturday in April and the third Saturday in October.

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

We drove on past the site, sobered by the realization of the destructive power that was released there. The stark beauty of New Mexico erased all those dark thoughts.

We’re sure we’ve mentioned it before and will mention it again, this area of the United States is remote, extremely remote. What do people do out here? They farm of course.

We saw this is Phoenix, and now we see it in Hondo NM, farming in the desert. We just don’t understand the economics of it. There’s an abundance of light and the soil must be extra fertile. But to this pair of New Englanders the desert seems odd place to raise water thirsty crops.

We made it to Roswell around lunchtime. It’s the biggest town around on our way to the next destination. We stocked up on groceries and propane. For heat we use propane and we were running low and wanted to fill it before heading into colder weather. We wanted to fill it a few days ago but the Pilot gas station we stopped at didn’t sell it (not all do).

Roswell is all about the aliens. Everything we’ve read described it as “touristy”, “junky”, and not to bother. Strangely we usually visit these places because they kitschy and also amusing. We weren’t able to stop but the drive through was everything you’d expect a place like Roswell to be. All aliens all the time.

The weirdness continued right into the grocery store. This is probably just southwest weirdness not Roswell weirdness but Roswell gets the “weirdo” credit.

We can almost understand Jalapeño turkey or chicken, but hot mac and cheese? Ugh!

We were back on the road and found ourselves surrounded by, well, nothing. Again. There’s a lot of nothing in-between small communities. Some of those small communities are just 100-200 people.

One nice thing about driving out west is that the roads are fast. 70 mph speed limits between towns is the norm. You do get to see some small towns. This is Seminole, Texas.

We pulled into the Andrews Chamber of Commerce as the sun was setting. Sorry about the buggy windshield. It’s still “bug season” out there. It’s a daily struggle to keep the windshield clean. It can take close to 10 minutes sometimes to get it cleaned.

If this seems familiar that’s because it is. We had found this spot as an eclipse viewing spot. It has water/electric/sewer and it was free although donations are accepted. (Of course we made a donation.) It got us closer to the highway we wanted for heading east. As much as we like those side roads? Overall they’re slower because they run thru towns and the speed limits drop. We need some highway driving otherwise it would take forever to get home.

Problems? Sure, we’re in oil country, it smells bad. The good news is that we quickly became nose blind and stopped smelling it. It is also somewhat noisy. Every hour or so some yahoo with a pickup truck and loud pipes would drive by trying to impress the other yahoos. But that goes away at some point and the town settles into a peaceful night.

Oh one last thing, Susan picked up one alien “souvenir” in Roswell. She cracked it open. And then it happened the “ick!” face.
(susan here: I had to. Yes it was bad.)

Daily: 327

Aliens seen in Roswell: 0

Alien abductions: 0

Return Total: 874

Return Overall Miles/Day: 291

Return Driving Miles/Day: 146

Overall Total: 4,010

Total Driving Miles/Day: 334

mpg: 6.9