240 miles
$0: Upper-Teton View, Bridger-Teton National Forest, WY

After waking up on the surface of the moon, I headed to the first community in the world to be lit by electricity generated by nuclear power – Arco, Idaho.

One remnant of this race to power America is the Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR-1) Atomic Museum.

It seems like it closed just yesterday. It’s 1951 all over again. ID, please.

Can I interest you in a canapé, or perhaps some uranium-235? The Texaco Star Theater has just started.

Growing up, I learned that the Vallecitas Boiling Water Reactor in the Bay Area was the first to power a city with nuclear power, beginning in 1957. Turns out that was the first commercial venture. Two years earlier, a sister reactor to EBR-1, Borax-III, powered the town of Arco, Idaho.

The control room, with all the switches, is virtually untouched.

Lemme just see what this lever does.

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Uh oh.

I’d better leave before anyone notices.

Highway 33/22 over the pass from Victor, ID into Jackson, WY is not as easy as it looks, even following a slow truck. The temperature gauge climbed a bit, and on the way down, there was a bit of brake smell. I pulled over to let things cool off.

The campground is a few miles down a rutted dirt road a few miles from Jackson Lake. But what did we learn about those roads?

They usually reward the effort. In this case, a bluff-view of the Tetons…

Early tomorrow, I’ll get back in the National Park campsite rat-race. And I just read that I need to have my kayak inspected before I put in, so I’ll need to backtrack a bit to Jackson.

Until then, I think I’ll just sit back and enjoy this sunset.