June 5: SW Road Trip Day 27: On To Alamogordo

We awake in Socorro, home of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Amy gets up, as usual, far earlier than I do. This morning she decides to go for a run since the temperature is not high yet. She happens upon the New Mexico Institute I just mentioned. After we eat breakfast, get organized, pack and head out, she shows me the campus. It is surrounded by a very green golf course. Very green because this is high desert and I am not used to it. Lovely place to go to school. Not a lovely place to take summer school.

On our way out of town, we stop at a Subway to get some sandwiches for lunch. We also gas up the X3, taking the opportunity to clean the windshield while we are at it.

Our destination today is the Trinity Site. On July 16, 1945, the Atomic Age began with the explosion of a plutonium bomb at this location. Today, we actually can’t get any closer than about 11 or 12 miles, but with this bomb, that was close enough. The “real” Ground Zero for the site is open two days a year for visitors, April 1 and October 1. Perhaps some day we will visit at that time, but this year, we settle for the “open every day” sign on Highway US 380:

Highway Marker at the Trinity Site

It is easy to see why this location was chosen. This is as desolate a place as you might happen on in the Continental USA. Add to that the lack of population. Security would have been easy to manage in ’45.

The Area around the Trinity Site

I have often thought about the dawn of the Atomic Age. Many of my generation are critical of Truman’s decision to drop the two bombs on Japan. I have a personal reason for not second guessing the Commander in Chief on that one. Had Truman decided to try to defeat Japan on Japanese soil without resorting to the bomb, many thousands of American soldiers would have died in the invasion (not to mention the 100's of thousands of Japanese who would have died). One of them might have been my Father, who was planning on staying in the Army had the Japanese not surrendered, ending the war, in August of ’45.

The actual visit to the site is pretty anticlimactic for me. There are no strong emotions as I consider what happened here. I do think about Robert Oppenheimer, who, on witnessing the explosion, claimed to have recalled the words from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Hey, if you can’t get a little philosophical at this place, where can you?

We get back onto the road and head toward Alamogordo, our next stop for the night. As we drive on to the east, we come upon ground that is very reminiscent of Sunset Crater. It is, indeed, a huge lava flow. The eruption occurred between 1,500 and 5,000 years ago and originated from several volcanoes in this area. The resulting lava flow is about 165 feet thick and 44 miles long. This is the most recent lava flow on the US Mainland. (St. Helens yielded no lava flow.)

Valley of Fires

There is a very nice little park on the eastern side of the flow. We stopped and enjoyed our lunch, but the little flies here were ferocious. We finished lunch and were about to head onto the nature trail that walked out over the lava flow, when we got talking with a woman and her two daughters, who were also waiting to take that walk. They had been eyeing a storm in the west:

Storm Heading Our Way

They claimed to have seen several lightning flashes. We had heard some thunder, but thought it to be far away to the north. Prudence getting the better of us, we decided to wait for the storm to pass over us as well. As we were waiting, we, too, noticed lots of lightning flashes. The people we had talked with gave up and left the Park.

It was very interesting to sit in the car and watch. There were lots of clear lightning strikes as the storm progressed across the 10 or so miles from the edge of the lava flow to where we sat in our car. The storm took a fairly long time to pass, and it was getting well into the late afternoon, so after about a half hour, we also took our leave.

The rest of the drive to Alamogordo was uneventful except for the half hour wait at a road construction site. While we were waiting, rain started coming down, then very small hail. Weird weather!

After another half hour or so of driving, we checked into our hotel, then went in search of a grocery store. We found a very nice Lowe’s Signature Kitchen store and got some fried chicken and a big salad kit to eat in our room.