Wendover historic airfield
One of the unexpected surprises of our Utah-Idaho trip, we toured the historic airfield at Wendover, Utah. At one time, it was among the busiest air bases in the country.
We stopped by because it became home to the secret squadron tasked with training to drop the atomic bomb—an important objective in our quest to see the major sites of the Manhattan Project.
The museum was worth a visit, but not a must-do. Instead, I’d recommend the “behind the scenes tour,” which is the same price but loads more interesting. I won’t get into all the details here, but the base was responsible for a number of important facets of the last phase of the Manhattan Project: successfully preparing to actually drop the bomb.
The museum
The airfield tour
This tour was a bus tour to various important buildings on the edge of the tarmac. We toured a large hanger, a fire station that had once been the bombardier training facility, and the vault building where the all-important Norden Bombsights were securely stored.
The best part of the tour was that each of the participants was given a “role.” Jen, for instance, was the navigator and I was the bombardier; others were the pilot, co-pilot, gunner, etc. Then throughout the tour, the docent would explain each of our roles and even have us role-play particular aspects of the mission.
The Enola Gay Hanger
Of course the highlight of tour, for us, was the Enola Gay hanger, which was being used by some young cadets at the time of our visit. Tibbet’s office was on the second floor on the south side of the building; they’re currently renovating it. We also visited the bomb pits where they loaded the bombs onto the B-29s (we saw the corresponding ones in Tinian).
🏷️25.06B
Absolutely terrible news: Grand Canyon’s historic North Rim Lodge has been destroyed by wildfire. This was among my favorite nat’l park lodges, centered around massive windows that frame an amazing vista of the Canyon. Really disappointed I didn’t stop by as I passed thru Jacob Lake last month. 😭
Here’s a gofundme for the park and concessionaire staff.
I’ve added some photos from the NPS (first three) and NationalParksTraveler.org (last) for those who haven’t been there:
I updated and added to my /uses page.
Q1: Do you have an aging parent? Q2: Do you have your own website?
If you’ve answered yes to both questions, create a permanent contact page for your parents.
Oh boy do I feel heard. ⛺
Well, hmmm…
We just pulled the trigger on buying new windows 💸 something we’ve needed to do for…like 7 or 8 years now? Half are broken; we haven’t dared to even open them in ages. We’re also springing for plantation shutters and new sunscreens. Perhaps we’ll have a whole new house vibe after installation!
I’m currently purging some old hiking guidebooks and happened across this old entry when my ex-wife and I got engaged while hiking in Yellowstone. We got engaged in Yellowstone NP, married in Yosemite NP, and divorced in Hohokam Pima NM—each on a July 15th. Feels like a lifetime ago at this point!
Woke up very early and can’t get back to sleep, so decided I might as well go enjoy a sunrise walk in the mountains…until I saw that it’s still over 90° outside.
Bummed to hear that Arizona political cartoonist Steve Benson has passed away. He was a fixture here in the state for decades.
I responded to a blog post about how LLMs could destroy small niche online communities. I don’t buy it, not one bit! Call it my #JulyReply2025.
Met Jen and Becci at Roses By the Stairs Brewing to celebrate 70-7 Day.
What’s 70-7 Day, you ask? A little commemoration of the time ASU utterly destroyed its rival from Tucson by 63 points, an epic Territorial Cup victory. A few of us even chipped in for a billboard on I-10… 😈🔱⬆️
I don’t follow music news closely, but was surprised to see a message from Pearl Jam that drummer Matt Cameron is moving on. Though 27 years is certainly a long run in a single artistic pursuit. Definitely bummed we had to bail on their Vegas show last year after my dad’s passing.
HUGE thanks to @lmika for entertaining my requests for his awesome Postlist plugin for Micro.blog.
I can now have a dedicated page for each of my trips that displays each full post in chronological order, so you can view the full content of all posts in the same order as the trip unfolded. 🙌
For this upcoming Canadian Rockies trip in Aug, I’ll drive from Phoenix, pick Jen up in Calgary, and send her off from Seattle.
Here’s the rough driving path I might take (between the red lines but not in the black area). Please let me know of any suggestions, or hop on my “let’s meet up” list.
Peter West Carey discusses what it took to get one-half second his footage into a major motion picture. Congrats, @pwc@mastodon.online!
🏕️ Woo! Got our campsites booked in Banff, Jasper, and Kootenay National Parks for our Canadian Rockies trip in August. Still plenty of planning required, but am glad we could snag reservations during busy season.
If you live in Phoenix, you are often told that—especially with a warming planet—the city will soon be uninhabitable. Here’s a counterargument:
Despite the flood of east-coaster think pieces, I think there’s an argument to be made that Phoenix is well-positioned to thrive in the climate crisis.
…
When it comes to redesigning our civilization around renewable energy, it makes much more sense for people to live in places where the big temperature-based energy needs come during summer days, when sunlight is most abundant, rather than needing that energy on winter nights, when photons are scarce.
…and that’s when everyone’s phone at the brewery blared the emergency message tone to alert us that a haboob was incoming…
Guess I’ll have to “shelter in place,” for uhh…safety.
A few shots from Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. We needed to get into the primitive BLM-managed portion for Jen’s Treasured Places quest, then boogied on up to Yellowstone, so none of the classic shots from the NPS side of things. 🏷️25.06B
