Arco, Idaho: First American City Lit By Atomic Power

Well, the title of this blog post says it all. We are in Arco, Idaho which is the first city lit by atomic power. It's just up the road from the grounds of the Idaho National Laboratory, which is a restricted area and highly secretive.


Sushhh, don't tell anyone because it's a secret, however I think they do work in the energy field. It's not oil, solar, wind, hydro-thermal, rubber bands, etc so it must be ..... that's right, they work with nuclear energy.


Actually, the fact they do work in the nuclear arena is not a secret; how they do what they do that is secret.


They have two missions: 1) develop clean, affordable, abundant, safe .... nuclear energy and 2) protect the country from nuclear threats. Today's missions are important stuff however originally they were mostly focused on research at the atomic level.



Why are we in Arco? Well, it's just down the road from the Craters of the Moon National Monument. Not familiar with that? Well, neither am I so that's why we will be spending time there tomorrow.

I do know it's the site of three relatively young lava fields that cover a half million acres. Not as young as those pictures you see of Hawaii where the lava is still running to the sea, but young in geologic terms. On the drive here we saw areas of lava in the fields along the road. In some places it covered huge areas, measured in miles.

In other places you would only see a roughly round patch of lava, maybe 100 yards in diameter.

Like a great big 'drop' of lava had been thrown a great distance up and away from a volcano and landed beside the road. That's probably not what happened but that's what it looks like. I'll know more tomorrow.

Before we arrived in this area we travelled through Rexburg, Idaho. Just a few miles outside of Rexburg is Yellowstone Bear Park.

Actually it's a lot more than bears however that's what bring people in, the chance to see bears in their natural environment. You drive through the park which had a few grizzlies, 38 black bears, an albino elk (reportedly one in six million odds), wolves, a moose, bear cubs, etc.

Pretty cool driving through the park; they warn you to keep the windows up, stay in your car, and keep moving so the bears do not climb on top of your vehicle. Seemed like good advice so we did as instructed.

Well, most of us did as instructed. I won't give her name but her initials are Mary Lynn. When she wanted a picture of a bear she would open the window of the RV. She said she felt pretty safe since the RV was so high off the ground. I wasn't too worried about having the window open briefly but when she started hanging out the window, yelling "hey bear, hey bear; bet you can't catch me", well I had to reel her back into the RV.


She didn't like it but hey, who's going to navigate if she gets eaten by a bear? I mean, who?



Tomorrow we will explore Craters of The Moon National Monument and then head north to Ketchum, Sun Valley, and Stanley; some of the most majestic scenery in this country awaits...


See Ya!