Tag: geeky

Kennedy Space Centre

We arrived in Orlando yesterday and we’ve been joined by our mates Robin and Esperanza.

Our first day was spent at Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral . Jen and I have been before but personally I couldn’t wait to get back there and was happy to repeat the tour and see some of the sites again, like the real Saturn V rocket which blasted the Apollo astronauts to the moon and the Rocket Garden (see pics).

This time though we had the added bonus of getting to have lunch with a real astronaut. We got to meet Gerry Carr , who trained for the Apollo missions and eventually got to blast off on a Saturn 1B rocket and spend 84 days aboard Skylab , the precursor to the International Space Station . I’m generally not particularly fussed about meeting ‘celebrities’, but the chance to talk to somebody who’s actually flown into space left me quite starstruck (no pun intended). It really was an amazing honour and he’s a really interesting guy so I’m so pleased we did it.

 

Roswell UFO Museum

Driving into Roswell at night is spooky.

It shouldn’t be because it’s just a city like every other we’ve visited, but it’s in the middle of absolutely nowhere in the desert and there’s nothing else on the road to Roswell than military bases, missile ranges and border patrol checks (even though it’s a fair way from the Mexican border). Add in a pretty spectacular lightning storm and I don’t mind telling you I was spooked before we even got there.

In the light of day Roswell looked fairly normal so we started with a trip to the UFO Museum and Research Center . The museum contains a large collection on newspaper clippings, testimonials, photos and other “evidence” of the UFO crash that some say happened on 4th July 1947. There is so much to read you could spend days there.

Now, obviously I don’t believe in UFO crash landings, but the sheer number of people involved in the incident and some indisputable facts about cover-ups, threats to individuals from the military and “deathbed confession” from some that had stayed quiet about the incident their whole lives all point the the fact that ‘something’ definitely happened. There are so many reports from those who either saw the crash, the military cordons or debris from the site etc. that it’s either the best organised hoax ever (involving hundreds of people), or the military were definitely trying to cover something up!

Given Roswell’s location, very close to Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands Missile Testing Range , and given that the US were testing all kinds of post WWII technologies in the desert including nuclear weapons delivery delivery and airborne radar tracking equipment, the obvious explanation is that some top secret defence technology crashed to the ground and the military came and took it away. That explanation is dull though and I’m glad there are still thousands of crazies out there perpetuating the conspiracy theories, most of them in Roswell.

So, having seen the (comparatively) serious stuff, we set out to find some of the craziness and we weren’t disappointed. We started with the worlds only UFO themed McDonalds and then visited ‘Alien Zone’ which was absolutely nuts. I won’t try to explain it but I hope you enjoy the photos.

 

 

 

Titan Missile Museum

What better way to follow our slightly bizarre morning touring a US military base than to visit a decommissioned cold war nuclear missile launch site?

The Titan Missile Museum is an underground facility around 15 miles south of Tucson housing a 103ft Titan II missile which used to contain a 9 megaton nuclear missile aimed at Russia. We were taken on a guided tour of various underground rooms and corridors including the control room and the missile silo which still contains an inert Titan missile.

There were 18 of these missile sites located around the Tucson area and each one was manned in 24 hour shifts and ready to launch a missile within 58 seconds that had a range of over 5000 miles and could hit a target within 1 mile, which seems incredible even now, let alone in 1963 when it was built.

Being able to tour an actual cold war nuclear missile launch site was a privilege in itself, but being shown round by Steve, an ex-employee at one of these sites and taken through the launch sequence in the control room was pretty special. Steve uses a walking stick these days and can’t take the stairs, but his enthusiasm for the site was matched only by our fascination. I asked him if the job was scary, he replied “No, but it could get quite tedious”.

As you can probably tell, we’ve been pretty excited by our last couple of trips .Our last few days visiting meteor craters, airplane graveyards and cold war missile sites have been great fun. It really does seem that the weirder this holiday gets the more interesting it gets, which is good because after visiting Tombstone tomorrow we’re off to Roswell!

 

Airplane Boneyard

We arrived in Tucson, Arizona last night and we’re staying at quite a nice golf resort just outside town thanks to Expedia and their secret deals (rack rate $170/night, our price $56/night, bargain!). They’ve left us a nice leaflet warning us about the local wildlife; scorpions, tarantulas, rattlesnakes, coyotes and gila monsters . I can take or leave the wildlife, but the desert landscape is gorgeous. We’re only 40 miles from Mexico and you can’t move for cactii.

It’s been a busy day today. We started by visiting the Airplane Boneyard and the PIMA Air and Space Museum .

The Airplane Boneyard is an aircraft storage facility located at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. It’s a real working military base so you have to be security checked first before boarding a tour bus for about an hour long tour of the facility.

The Airplane Boneyard is over 2600 acres in size and it’s where over 4000 military aircraft have ended up now that they are no longer needed. Instead of being destroyed they are mothballed and covered in protective plastic so that they can be put back into service, used for parts, or sold to other countries when needed. The location was chosen because the lack of rain, humidity and wind in the desert means that the aircraft will last a very long time without too much effort.

The facility is home to an impressive array of aircraft, from fighter jets like F-14’s (think ‘Top Gun’), 15’s and 16’s to bombers like the B-29 and helicopters like the UH-1 “Huey” famous for it’s use in Vietnam). The thing that impresses most though is the sheer size of the park and the billions of dollars worth of aircraft just lined up in rows for as far as the eye can see. It’s a bit of a shame you’re not allowed to leave the bus but it is a military base after all.

We also go to spend a short amount of time at the PIMA Air and Space Museum which organises the tours. The museum is home to hundreds more historic aircraft and allows you to get up close and personal with them.

I’ll post later about our trip to the Titan Missile Museum this afternoon.

 

 

 

Atomic Testing Museum

It might not be at the top of most people’s list of things to do in Las Vegas, but we spent an interesting couple of hours at the Atomic Testing Museum earlier today.

The museum mainly covers the history of the Nevada Test Site where over 900 nuclear bombs have been detonated, just 65 miles from Las Vegas, but also takes you through a general timeline of the invention of nuclear weapons.

I knew that the Americans were keen on testing nukes in the desert, but I had no idea it was so many and so close to Las Vegas. Apparently the testing was one of the factors in the growth of tourism here. People used to come to Las Vegas to visit the viewing points where they could see the explosions in the distance. Crazy!

I also had no idea the site was still in use, not for weapons testing but for training emergency services to deal with a nuclear accident or terrorist attack.

Strangely, they also had a couple of other exhibits that weren’t related to nuclear testing, including a large piece of a steel strut from the World Trade Center. There was no explanation of why, but why not?

Pinball Hall of Fame

Just a quick post today because we’re still having fun and recharging the batteries in Vegas .

We spent a couple of hours today at the Pinball Hall of Fame , a not-for-profit museum (well, warehouse)  containing a huge collection of both pinball machines and (more interestingly for me) original arcade games dating back to the 70’s.

If you’re not interested in old video games then it probably looks as dull as hell, but for me it bought back some great memories, with fully playable versions of Paperboy, Pac-man, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Tetris and Space Invaders.

Having spent many a day as a 10 year old begging my parents for 50p’s to play the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tutrles game, it was odd watching 4 grown adults playing the game again while their 10 year old looking on in bemusement. Nothing makes you feel old like realising that your favourite toys were made 30 years ago.

Anyway, the museum is a labour of love and all profits and donations go to the Salvation Army so if you can tear yourself away from everything else Vegas has to offer I can thoroughly recommend it.

 

Los Angeles Day 2

My day 2 in LA was really my first day in LA as I was in bed ill yesterday.

Luckily, Dennis had been on the city tour yesterday and kindly agreed to drive me around a few of the sights again today so I could see them, so apologies for the duplicate photos of the Hollywood Sign, Chinese Theatre and Walk of Fame below.

We also had time to check out the John Paul Getty Museum and the Griffiths Observatory .

The John Paul Getty Museum is home to several art collections including painting, photography, furniture and sculpture, housed in some impressive buildings. Given that it started as his personal art collection it’s impressive, but to be honest unless your a fine art expert or particularly interested in pre-19th century furniture there’s little by anyone you’ll recognise (apart from one van Gogh apparently) and the art collections themselves didn’t seem all that impressive, even the photography exhibit which I thought I would really enjoy. Having said that, the architecture of the museum itself and it’s grounds are stunning. It’s built on hills overlooking LA and the gardens and the view you get from them is worth taking the trek up there alone.

This evening we visited the Griffiths Observatory, which was far more up my street. The Griffiths Observatory is also on top of the hills overlooking LA, so as well as being treated to some incredible night time views of the city we got to see a great planetarium show about the history of astronomy. It’s a great story and the narrator could give Brian Cox a run for his money. There were some really great exhibits, including a ‘Foucault pendulum’ , designed to demonstrate the rotation of the earth (please don’t ask me to explain), the phases of the moon, eclipses, etc. My only regret was not getting to look through their refracting telescope. As far as I know it’s one of the only places in the world where you can get to look at the night sky through a full size observatory telescope, but it was too cloudy and we were too late anyway. Oh well, still a great day.

 

Musee Mecanique

Yesterday was kind of a rest day for us in San Francisco, but we did manage to get down to Fisherman’s Wharf again in the evening and came across the ‘Musée Mécanique’ at Pier 45.

It describes itself as “One of the world’s largest privately owned collection of coin-operated mechanical musical instruments and antique arcade machines in their original working condition.”

All of the machines are playable from the antique exhibits (some of which are over 100 years old) through the the most recent machines from the 80’s, some of which I remember playing as a kid such as ‘Pole Position’ and ‘Super Sprint’ and really enjoyed playing again. We also go to play on an original ‘Pong’ machine with paddles which was one of the first proper video games in 1972.

After grabbing some food in San Francisco’s famous Boudin Bakery and learning about how their founders travelled from France to set up a bakery during the gold rush and how the bakery survived the 1906 earthquake in their own mini museum, we took a cable car (tram) back to our hotel.

The cable cars are one of San Francisco’s biggest tourist attractions and they still run the original cars, some of which are over 100 years old, up and down the hills of San Francisco. They are so called because the streets under the tracks actually have a cable running right the way underneath them which is constantly moving at 9mph. The cable car controller starts and stops the tram by causing it to grip onto the underground cable when he wants the car to move and letting go when he needs the car to stop.

The best thing though is that passengers are encouraged to hang onto the outside of the car and lean out as it zips up and down the hills. this is especially fun at night when the cable car controllers are having a bit of fun with the tourists and decide to see how fast they can go round some of the corners. The photo at the bottom is a blurry one of me hanging out of the cable car as we flew down a hill.

 

Museum of Flight

Before leaving Seattle for Vancouver this afternoon we visited the Museum of Flight .

Highlights of the day included a look round one of only 4 Concordes still viewable by the public and a tour of an Air Force One plane used by presidents Nixon and JFK. We also got a ride in a 2 person 360° fighter jet simulator which Jen quite enjoyed pulling barrel rolls in.

I’ll be totally honest here. Unless you’ve visited the museum or you have a particular interest in aviation the following photos aren’t going to be particularly interesting, but I thought I’d include them anyway.

We’ve now back in Canada again and looking forward to the next 2 days in Vancouver before heading back down to Seattle again.