Equipo Williams

When we first started making plans for our trip, we had a map showing the locations and names of all the National Parks. After dinner one night, Syd was looking at it and pointed to Craters of the Moon in Idaho and asked “what’s this all about?” Jessie had been as a child, and said it was a great place, so we decided that would be our western-most point of our American trip.

Craters of the Moon is a fascinating place. First, I had no idea that there had been an eruption in Idaho 2200 years ago. Geologically that’s basically right now. The change in terrain is pretty quick when approaching, and the park is obviously covered in volcanic rock. After arriving late and setting up in the campsite, we went to the visitor center then next morning and explored the park the next day.

We started with a hike across the cones and ridges in the north west of the park. The surrounding area is flat and the wind was howling when we were anywhere exposed. The kids were less than enthused with the hike and Jessie and I were a little worried Syd would be blown off a ridge. We did get to see different volcanic features, including both pahoehoe and a’a flows, spatter cones, cinder cones, and lots of lava tubes. We went into two of the larger lava tubes that are open to visitors in the afternoon: we had our headlamps with us so we were able to go fairly far underground and the kids loved exploring the caves.

We had told the kids that our plan was to get up the next morning and go straight to Salt Lake City, having been camping for seven days since South Dakota. We did set of directly, but sometimes you just come across interesting things on the way.

On the way out of Craters of the Moon we passed through Idaho National Laboratory. It turns out if you want to mess around with nuclear reactors, doing it in remote places is a good idea, and south eastern Idaho is pretty remote and empty. We had seen signs for an “Atomic Museum” and weren’t going to drive past that. It turned out to be EBR-1, the world’s first breeder reactor and first reactor to provide power. It was a very-well done museum, going through the theory of fission power generation and how the reactor worked and how it was built. The control room was beautiful: all pre-digital controls, with lots of needles and buttons and instruments for recording data on graph paper.

We spent about 90 minutes there and then turned south for Salt Lake City. I had noticed from the atlas that our route would take us within a few miles of Promontory Summit where the transcontinental railroad was finished. I had expected a sign in the middle of the desert, but felt that I would still like to go. When we got there, however, there were two functional replicas of the locomotives that were present at the driving of the Gold Spike. The kids at this point were starting to mutiny, but I can put up with a lot of whining if trains or planes are involved so we stayed to see them put locomotive 119 back in the engine house.

Did I mention that the kids were mutinying? As we left Promontory Summit, I noticed just up the highway what was unmistakably a Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster in front of what appeared to be an office park. That turned out to be the ATK rocket park (which I think was Thiokol, who I know made the SRBs, and is now part of Northrup Grumman). Audrey was done with learning for the day and insisted she wasn’t getting out of the car, so Jessie, Syd and I did a quick walk around the park. Apart from the SRB, there were various missiles and rocket stages, including Trident and Minuteman ballistic missiles. They also had a cutaway showing the how the fuel was placed in the boosters: since solid rocket fuel just burns once ignited and can’t be controlled, there are clever ways of arranging the fuel so that it burns at different rates. In the shuttle boosters, the cross-section was a star shape which allowed for high thrust at launch and then a reduction of thrust about a minute after launch to reduced stress on the vehicle.

At this point the day was getting long, and I had spent all my credit for looking an neat technical things. We kicked a tumbleweed away from the car, and headed down to Salt Lake and a few days of resupply, catching up on home schooling, and rest.