Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

The part on nuclear energy was very well done, and included a fair amount of French nuclear reactors, France probably being the leading country in nuclear energy, and interestingly, I learned that France, and in turn most of Europe, recycles and reuses most nuclear waste to further get energy from it and reduce the waste to much smaller amounts. In the meantime, the US doesn't recycle waste, and has huge amounts sitting in what were supposed to be temporary cooling ponds, where it's more vulnerable to attack, while politicians are still fighting over whether that waste can be transported to its supposed final storage location in the middle of a mountain in Nevada. Go USA!

french poster selling radioactive cream, supposedly to make women prettier. Ooops...

let's not forget radium water you can make at home :)

I didn't get an atomic energy lab kit when I was a kid :)

But outside of nuclear energy, they had quite a good collection of planes and rockets:

atomic cannon, never had seen one before

The collection of cruise missiles and ICBMs was very good:

Hello! :)

the list of broken arrows, lost nuclear missiles, was 'interesting'

ICBMs have multiple nuclear warheads that get ejected on multiple targets

The first nuclear bomb, named "gadget", tried at the Trinity site in New Mexico

this was used to create fat man

and sadly ended up in Japan

welcome to New Mexico, the state of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul :)

Is that a gun in your bag? Apparently the TSA finds many guns people forget in their carry ons...

As soon as I landed, Arturo came to pick me up and we went to the Albuquerque Museum of Nuclear Science and History (on its own page)

From there, we drove through Santa Fe towards Taos:

The next morning, we went snowboarding in Taos, in passable conditions (see Too sunny conditions at Taos Mountain page for details):

After skiing at Taos Mountain the 2nd day, we went to drive in downtown Taos a bit. We were surprised to see Kit Carson, from Carson Spur and Carson Pass around Kirkwood in California. That was a long way for him to go:

the magpie, aka the michoko bird :)

The next day, we elected not go to to Taos and just start driving towards Jackson Hole, but on the way out, we went to visit Taos Pueblo, an Indian reservation in Taos. It was deserted, but nice to visit:

We then went on our way, and stopped at a fun Gator park on the way:

nice teeth

nice turkey

On the way, we stopped at Leadville Airport, the highest airport in the continental US:

And then, we went back for a longish-drive and we got as far as Rock Springs before calling it a day. Arturo was a trooper there. Thanks to nexrad weather on my phone, we were able to hit minimal weather. Arturo spotted a very nice fox in the snow:

After a night in Rock Springs, we got up early and drove to Jackson Hole. The conditions were mostly icy on the first day, but better on the second day thanks to 4 fresh inches of power (follow the link for details)

After skiing in Jackson Hole, we went to the town of Jackson for a quick tour, and some food. Found a moose eating vegation in the restaurant's parking lot:

After 2 days of skiing, I figured I had gotten the best snow there was to get (the powder that just fell was going to ice up again), so I was able to get a flight one day early out of Jackson:

Here are a few pictures:

very nice freshwater prawn

leafy seadragon just awesome :)

the weedy seadragon are so pretty