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We chose Billings for an overnight stop because of our plans for the next morning. The elevation is reasonable and the runway is long. And it's close to the Rocky Mountains, which we'll cross early in the day, before the rising heat makes turbulence and reduces the airplane's performance.
In this part of the country, many water features are temporary. A few miles
west of Billings, we see that Canyon Creek is all but dry, and
Big Lake
is headed in the same direction. These are shown with dots on the
sectional chart to alert the navigator.
In a few minutes, we'll start climbing as the ground rises to meet us. Turn
left at Livingston, and we're about to fly over the mountains.
Mount Washburn is in the center of this shot, with the snow-capped Absaroka
Range in the background. We're now over Yellowstone National
Park.
This is the Norris Geyser Basin, the park's hottest, most active area.
While I was busy staying away from the edges of the air
(that's where you hit things), Barbara got a good look at the Grand Prismatic
Spring. The colors are made by bacteria in the water. Different animals
all have their own favorite temperatures, so what you see here is effectively
a thermal image of this beautiful hot spring.
Old Faithful is close to these last scenes, but we weren't clever enough to time our overflight to catch an eruption.
It took about 45 minutes to negotiate the Rockies, and then it was back
downhill to Idaho Falls. A few minutes before landing there, we flew over
Rexburg. There's a huge R on North Menan Butte overlooking the Snake
River, so nobody will mistake it for some other place. It originally stood
for Ricks College, which is now called Brigham Young University — Idaho.
Fortunately, the town name also starts with R.
The Oregon Trail followed the south shore of the Snake River through much of
Idaho. In 1852, John Jeffrey promoted an alternate trail that followed
traditional Shoshone routes. This route required travellers to cross the
river, providing business for his ferry. The road was rough going
because of the lava flows that dominate the Snake River basin. These features
look bad enough from an airplane two thousand feet above them, but from the
ground they're positively forbidding. This route didn't get much use for
several years.
By 1862, the combined desires for a faster route to Salmon River gold,
and to avoid Indian attacks, revived
interest in the route. Tim Goodale led a large party over Jeffrey's route
along the northern edge of the lava fields.
This time, the route became popular. It was used heavily for the next fifty years, and became known as Goodale's Cutoff. Encouraged by having seen tracks of the Santa Fe Trail on a previous trip, we tried to find parts of Goodale's Cutoff while we were in the area. This one was more elusive; we never saw it. If you'd like to try, the National Park Service provides directions.
This lump of basalt sits under a sign at a roadside marker
about halfway from Idaho Falls to Arco.
It's the stuff that makes up this landscape. It looks like a big
chunk of asphalt, but it's much tougher than that.
This is an Oliver Three Disc Gang Plow from about 1909 that was found on
government land near Goodale's Cutoff. This plow was made to stand up to
hard use and was known for its ability to penetrate hard, rocky soil.
Unfortunately, there was not enough water for plants to grow in the land
turned by this plow. Homesteaders in the region eventually lost their land
for lack of water.
The signs at the roadside marker just mentioned explain how these three geological landmarks were formed.
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| East Butte flowed up and cooled quickly about 600,000 years ago. Although East Butte and Middle Butte look similar, but they were formed in different ways. A dome of melted rhyolite that rose up through a volcanic fissure became East Butte. Rhyolite is an acidic rock formed when magma melts the earth's crust. | Middle Butte is a block of hard lava, or basalt. Basalt is made of material from the earth's mantle, pushed up by volcanic activity. Usually, the crust is disturbed before an eruption, so rhyolite is older than basalt. |
Towering 2500 feet high, two overlapping rock domes form
Big Southern Butte,
a 300,000 year old
butte that dominates this lava plain.
After a hot flow of rhyolite boiled up through older lava, a second rhyolite dome pushed up a block of earlier basalt on its northwest side. They took thousands of years to reach their present shape, but geologically they are recent structures. |
Almost no settlers were enticed to stay in southern Idaho; this was always just a place on the way to somewhere better. For some, the isolation was desirable. So desirable, that the government even prints a note on the sectional chart, "requesting" pilots to keep their distance. We're interested in an Idaho outpost that now tolerates visitors.
We stayed at Arco, which has a good airport with almost all the services we needed. Parking and fuel are available, but you can't rent a car in Arco. The nearest agent is at the airport in Idaho Falls, 65 miles away. So that's where we landed, an hour short of our goal. This stung a bit when we left, as we were still headed west but had to drive an hour east before we could start flying. Sometimes our destinations work out that way. Logistics on the ground would prove challenging at two more stops on this trip, where we couldn't use the closest airport because the ground transportation we needed was unavailable.
In August 1939 Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt, warning that Germany had the wherewithal to produce vast amounts of energy in a small package, by harnessing nuclear fission – "splitting the atom." Einstein explained bluntly how this technology would lead to a bomb of unstoppable force. The following month, Hitler invaded Poland, starting World War II. The race was on.
G.B. Pegram of Columbia University had arranged a conference between physicist Enrico Fermi and the Navy Department earlier that year. This eventually led to a secret project spread over several locations in New York City, under the direction of Gen. Leslie Groves. The decision was taken to investigate as many avenues to harnessing nuclear power as possible, including espionage in Germany.
Soon, the Manhattan Project was too big for Manhattan. It grew into other
locations, including the Argonne National Laboratory near Fermi's base in
Chicago. As the team grew closer to producing a bomb, several of them were
moved to an outpost in New Mexico. Two of those principals were Fermi
and Walter Zinn. Zinn's history followed the same path as the project. He
was educated at Columbia, worked with Fermi at the University of Chicago, and
moved with the Manhattan Project to Los Alamos.
After the War, Zinn became director of the Argonne Laboratory. He presided over the establishment of its western branch, the Idaho National Laboratory. Now that the U.S. had shown the devastation that atomic fission could bring, scientists at the INL sought to demonstrate peaceful uses for this powerful source of energy. The area had once been an ordnance proving ground for the Navy, chosen for its remoteness. That same attribute made it an ideal location for ground-breaking experiments in nuclear fission.
Not far from Big Southern Butte, a highway sign points to "EBR-1."
There is no other explanation. If you don't know what that means, you'll
drive on by.
If you take the turn, you'll find the world's first atomic power
plant, now open to the public at the end of a mile-long road.
This is where Walter Zinn presided over the breeder reactor that was the
prototype for nuclear power plants all over the world, both on land and at
sea (and in the air, almost).
There are a few warnings, some old and some contemporary. Nobody inspects
packages and briefcases these days, but neither do they explain how the
contamination was broken or how it got fixed.
There are lines on the floor to suggest the best route through the facility.
With the aid of a
brochure, this self-guided tour is pretty thorough. It begins by
explaining how all power plants generate electricity by spinning turbines to
rotate wires in a magnetic field – sort of an electric motor in
reverse. The turbine is turned by pressure from steam, which is
produced by boiling water. Conventional power plants boil the water by
burning something – oil, coal, maybe even wood or government documents.
EBR-1 boiled it with the enormous heat released by nuclear fission.
1940s-style blackboards are strategically located with explanations for
the power plant's components. This one tells how the heat from the
atomic chain reaction was carried to the steam boiler by using liquid metal.
I wouldn't like to be the plumber on that job.
Every power plant has a control room. This room
would look familiar to anybody who works where they burn coal to make
electricity. Rather than metering coal or oil, the operators moved fuel
rods to control heat production.
This model on top of the reactor shows how the fuel was handled. Uranium was
placed in long, thin stainless steel tubes and lowered into the reactor
core through the hole at the bottom of this picture. Fission took place in
the core, producing heat and – in EBR-1 – breeding more fuel.
Some radioactive NaK (liquid metal) stuck to the fuel rods when they were
removed from the core. The rods were washed in a special chamber and stored
here in the rod farm, where they were tracked individually by number.
How do you fix things when they break, if they're radioactive enough to kill
you? We're looking through
34 panes of inch-thick glass at the business ends
of robot arms that were used to manipulate tools and the components that
needed repair. The concrete walls of this hot cell are also 39 inches thick.
Outside the hot cell, the operator used controls like the ones you can
see on the "claw machine" at your local all-night diner. There's another of
these machines nearby where the visitor can try his hand at moving things
around. This visitor can tell you that it's not as easy as it looks.
Cause and effect. Steam pressure from the reactor rotated this turbine,
which turned the generator to make electricity. The four 200-watt
bulbs here are
strung just as they were in December 1951, when this equipment demonstrated
the world's first peaceful use of atomic energy. Walter Zinn and his staff
left their names on a chalkboard in the room. Later, Reid Cameron,
one of those scientists, added a little
demon exhaling "a mighty puff of energy." The chalkboard says,
Electricity was first generated here from Atomic Energy on Dec. 20, 1951.
On Dec. 21, 1951
all of the electrical power in this building was supplied
from Atomic Energy
| Those present: | |
| W.H. Zinn | H.V. Lichtenberger |
| M. Novick | L.J. Koch |
| E.W. Pettitt | G.K. Whitham |
| R. Cameron | M.L. King |
| B.C. Cerutti | M. Wilkey |
| E.J. Barrow | G.H. Stonehocker |
| L.E. Loftin | K. Johnson |
| C.R. Gibson | F.D. McGinnis |
| W.E. Molen | |
| L.H. Jolley |
In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson named EBR-1 a National Historic Landmark.
As a scientific experiment, EBR-1 was a strong success: it proved Fermi's principle of breeder reactors. It was never intended for commercial application, though. The 300-kW turbine generator, which eventually produced 200 kilowatts, was much too small for that. The engineering projects followed shortly. There were three power plants called BORAX, an acronym for Boiling Reactor Experiment.
The real engineering experiment was EBR-2. Ground broke for this power plant
six years after EBR-1 lit those four bulbs in 1951. Although NaK had been
shown to be a good coolant, handling it was difficult; EBR-2 used liquid
sodium. This diagram shows the layout of EBR-2, including the recycling
facility. Not only must the power plant breed fuel, it's required to recycle
the spent fuel it has already used. If you can't spend much time in the room
at EBR-1 dedicated to its successor, there is a
monograph on the INL web site that explains it in great detail.
Before EBR-1 ceased operation in 1964, it was converted to run on plutonium,
the product of breeding fuel. This bulb was lit by the plutonium reactor on
9 May 1963.
These are prototypes from the Heat Transfer Reactor Experiment, a
bland-sounding name for a program to develop a nuclear-powered engine
for an airplane at the Idaho National Laboratory. A number of
tests were made in the late 1940s and early 1950s,
using a modified B-36 to carry the engine
in its bomb bay while the crew made measurements. After the program was
cancelled in 1961 (too expensive, too provocative), The Smithsonian
Institution acquired the engines. It was not practical to move them to
Washington for display, so they are here in the parking lot of EBR-1. The
newer HTRE-3 (left) was considered very close to the final design.
One of the problems to be overcome was protecting the airplane's crew from radiation. In the prototype, this was originally accomplished by using a lead-lined cockpit that added over 12 tons to the airplane's weight.
A small room near EBR-1's exit is devoted to local wildlife.
They don't explain why this area is depressed, or if it will be feeling
better any time soon.
Arco is the closest town to INL's breeder reactor experiments. On
17 July 1955, Arco's electrical power was disconnected from its power grid
and attached to INL's BORAX-III power plant. For over an hour, all of the
city's power was taken from BORAX-III, making it the first city in the world
to be powered exclusively from atomic energy.
We were in town a few days too
early for their
annual summer party, but it looks like it might have been worth
hanging around to join the fun.
Another roadside sign identifies the Idaho National Laboratory as the
"birthplace of the nuclear navy." Arco has a couple of souvenirs to commemorate
this fact. Here is the sail of USS Hawkbill, launched in 1969. Among
the submarine's missions was an 87-day cruise beneath the North Polar ice
cap. Because its breeder reactor could make more fuel than it consumed,
endurance is listed as "unlimited." This 302-foot ship was decommissioned in
2000.
I'm not sure why this Mark-14 torpedo is on display. It was not powered by
atomic energy, and it didn't carry a nuclear warhead. Its purpose seems to
be to serve as Arco's memorial to more than 4000 Navy submariners "still on
final patrol" since submarines became part of the U.S. Navy in 1900.
The backdrop to the Hawkbill sail and the torpedo is Arco's Number
Hill. Seniors of the Butte County High School Class of 1920 climbed up there
and painted en enormous number "20" to express their school spirit, or
something like that. Since then, every class has added its number to the hill.
They're painted in school colors (orange, black, and white), but the darker
colors are hard to see.
The place to eat in Arco is Pickle's. The food is good, service is friendly,
and you meet people. Arco is small, so before long you'll see
almost everyone in town here. We met these people, who were also
staying at the motel two doors down from Pickle's. They were near the
beginning of a cross-country jaunt on skateboards. They have been
trying to raise money to help find a cure for Alzheimer's Disease, calling
their mission
A Push to Remember. Their goal, which they have completed, was to attract
donations as they pushed their boards from Newport, Oregon, to New York City.
This is the signature dish at Pickle's – fried pickles, what else?
We stayed two nights in Arco. After the skateboarders pushed on, our new
motel neighbors were a couple on their way home from a convention of
Motor Maids, the world's first women's motorcycle club.
All of their equipment has specialty licensing. The lady's bike is MOTRMD
and her trailer is RD TRP (road trip), but her husband's registration
needed a bit of explaining. He's retired, so he explained that his bike has
ONHLDY for "on holiday."
Most visitors to this part of the country know that Yellowstone National Park
sits on a dormant super-volcano. 100-250 miles southwest, Idaho's Snake River
Plain was also formed by the Yellowstone Hot Spot, but earlier.
This diagram, from a
photographic essay on the geological evolution of Yellowstone National
Park, shows how the hot spot has migrated over the last sixteen million years
or so.
At
Craters of the Moon National Monument, this animated display in the
visitor center also tracks the progress of the Yellowstone Hot Spot across the
Snake River Plain. The Great Rift is in the center of this picture.
This fissure, running northwest to southeast, opens between the Picabo and
Heise Calderas. This is where we find Craters of the Moon. Its features are
the result of volcanic eruptions and lava seeping upward through the Great Rift.
The name of the Monument came from a report to the National Park Service by
geologist Harold T. Stearns, who said, "the dark craters and the cold
lava, nearly destitute of vegetation, [are] similar to the surface of the moon
as seen through a telescope."
Several notable explorers were active in this area at the beginning of the 19th century. John Work was born in Ireland but spent most of his life exploring the West for the Hudson Bay Company. On one prospecting trip, he was looking for a shortcut from the mountains to the Snake River when he stumbled on the Great Rift, which slowed his progress considerably.
By following the Clearwater River, Lewis and Clark trekked north of here. Their party's youngest member would return to Idaho, 25 years after the Corps of Discovery Expedition.
Jean Baptiste Charbonneau is the child on the U.S. dollar coin. He was born
to Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau during Lewis and Clark's
expedition. William Clark saw to it that the boy was well
educated in the U.S. and in Europe. Charbonneau ended up back in the Arco
area in his twenties, working as a guide and trapper. He was guiding a party
who sought a quicker route from the Snake River to the beaver streams in the
mountains, when they also came upon the Great Rift. They ran out of water in
this desert, and Charbonneau went to look for some. He stumbled on John
Work's camp. Mistaking it for an Indian camp, he stole away and spent two
weeks struggling through the lava, back to the Snake River.
Then he got caught up in the Gold Rush, and spent much of the rest of his life
prospecting.
Another famous trapper who worked in this area was Virginia-born John Day. On one of several expeditions in Oregon Territory, he got sick near the present-day town of Weiser. Ramsay Crooks stayed behind to help him. The men were robbed and left naked, surviving for a while on ground vegetation. They met some friendly Indians, who helped them get through the winter. When he got back to Astoria after that ordeal, Day understandably had a lot of mental problems. After several years of hunting in the Willamette River Valley, he joined the Snake Country Expedition. He died on this trip at a place on the Little Lost River that was known for years as "Day's Defile."
Most of the inspiration to protect this area followed the exploration of Robert Limbert, who hiked the entire length of the Great Rift in 1920. He made several other exploratory trips here in the 1920s. As a result of Limbert's findings and articles in the National Geographic, President Calvin Coolidge declared this place a national monument in 1924. In 2002 President Clinton expanded the protected area to a National Preserve, setting aside a parcel of land about the size of Rhode Island. Over half of this area is lava flow, the black area in the visitor center diorama.
As we drive toward the monument from Arco, there is a pulloff about 300 yards before the park entrance. The vista there is a preview of the structures we're about to visit.
There's a much wider version of this panorama here, and this collage correlates each peak to its location on a map of the Craters of the Moon. Our tour begins near North Crater, the second hill from the right of this scene. There is a short trail in the North Crater's lava flows where we can see several examples of different lava formations, and learn a bit about the ages of some features in the area.
Geologically, North Crater is young – about 2000 years old. The soil
hasn't eroded much, but it can still support limber pine and antelope
bitterbrush. There's a lot of bare rock, and there are still many sharp
angles.
In 1924, Robert Limbert guessed that the lava here was about 150 years old,
based on its appearance. More accurate measurements have since shown that
this lava flowed from North Crater about 2000 years ago. The rafted blocks,
or monoliths, were floated here on a river of lava. In some places, the lava
river still looks like a river.
Grassy Cone is older; it was formed about 7500 years ago. Its soil is finer,
supporting sagebrush and Douglas Fir. There is more vegetation in general
than when the cone was younger, and its shape is rounder now.
The lava in the foreground is aa (two syllables, it's a Hawaiian word). Aa is produced in a violent, sudden eruption. A crust never hardened on its surface; chunks of already-cooled rock tumbled along the top and sides of the hardened flow.
If the lava flow is slower and more fluid, the surface hardens into a crust
and leaves the wavy forms of
pahoehoe (also Hawaiian). Hotter lava can still flow under the surface of
pahoehoe, leaving caves or tubes behind.
← This is a squeeze up. Pressure from below broke the crust, and some
lava was forced out on top.
Many things can change the pressure of lava flowing in a tube. The pressure
may heave up the crust and crack it, usually along the crest. Deeper
crevices in pressure ridges make good homes for pikas, ground squirrels, and
chipmunks. Larger animals like weasels hunt them here.
A hundred years ago, a visiting minister declared this jumble of rocks,
shrubs, and trees to be a garden "fit for the devil himself."
So the Park Service has named this area, with its many dead trees, the
Devil's Orchard.
Given enough water and enough time for soil to accumulate, even trees will
grow in a lava field. Limber pines are hardy pioneers,
so it doesn't make sense that they're all dead here.
First came dwarf mistletoe. This small, parasitic plant distorts the
branches of limber pines into grotesque tangles called "witches' broom."
Then came good intentions. To save the area's pines from "disfigurement,"
previous park managers poisoned or cut thousands of affected trees.
These managers tried to make nature conform to their idea of what was
beautiful, or "good," not considering that limber pine
and mistletoe are both native plants. Witches' broom is born of a
longstanding relationship between them.
To preserve park scenery, park managers had cut down park resources. A value judgment about witches' broom – that it is unsightly, ugly, or "bad" – caused the death of these trees.
"Lichens are fungi that have discovered agriculture."
– Trevor Goward, lichen biologist
Lichens are symbiotic organisms dominated by a fungus. Fungi can't make their own food; they live as parasites. Lichen fungi cultivate partners that make food by photosynthesis. Often the partners are algæ, but they may also be cyanobacteria (formerly called blue-green algæ). These fascinating organisms may be found all over the world, from the Equator to the poles, often in places where no other organisms will survive. Many people mistake them for moss.
Lichens are the first plants to grow in the
"orchard," slowly dissolving rock into soil, where more advanced plants
can take root.
They're tough, but lichens can still be threatened by human activity because
they store airborne chemicals. Microscopic examinations show that lichens at
Craters of the Moon have been damaged by polluted air. First to grow and
first to be damaged, lichens warn us that the park's air suffers from
polluters near and far.
This piece of basalt cooled rapidly, forming obsidian.
Inferno Cone is a well-named cinder cone – a pile of cinders that all fell
in the same place during an eruption.
Those who walk to the top are
rewarded with a view of the chain of cinder cones that define the Great Rift.
It was a hot day and the black surface makes it even hotter. We decided to
settle for the view we'd get later from the airplane.
Picture raindrops falling into a puddle. Spatter cones are formed when chunks or
blobs of lava drop onto a surface that's still molten. Three monochromes
show the spatter cones near Inferno Cone. When Limbert was here in the
1920s, they looked very much like they did when they were formed about 2100
years ago.
(water photo by
Michael Melgar)
Forty years later, unrestricted access had brought extensive damage. Then
the Park Service imposed some limits, laid out trails and did some
rehabilitation. By the 1980s, these spatter cones had started to look a
little more original.
The small spatter cone in the foreground of the last two pictures is called
Snow Cone. We were there on a hot July day, but there was still a little bit
of snow inside.
It looks like the trail has been moved to the other side of the first
spatter cone.
There's no snow inside its chimney, which now supports some lichens.
Turning around at the top of that spatter cone, we got this view. Maybe we
should have climbed Inferno Cone after all.
The hardy wildflowers growing in these cinders have names like fleabane,
monkeyflower, and dwarf buckwheat. Unusually large root systems let them
survive in this desert.
Smaller globs of lava solidified before they could make spatter cones. These
"lava bombs" can be as large as ten feet across, but most – like these
– are from baseball to basketball size.
As lava flowed through here, its surface cooled and hardened. But there was
so much lava flowing that it burst through this roof, forming ponds that also
crusted over, like ice forms on a lake. When
the volcanic activity finally slowed down, the lava drained back into the
tubes, leaving no support for the second crust. It collapsed, forming sinks
like this one, which is called simply Big Sink.
Some of the lava here has titanium magnetite crystals suspended in its
surface, which gives it this iridescent blue appearance.
The last few shots were taken on the Tree Mold Trail. As lava flowed here,
it surrounded living trees. Of course, they didn't live long after that.
After the trees burned and the wood rotted away, impressions of their
trunks remained.
All lava tubes eventually collapse.
Sometimes, this forms a cave or a tunnel.
Sometimes, it just leaves a pit behind.
Kids will play in those pits, no matter what the sign says.
One lava tube has not finished collapsing, so it is still a
tunnel. It is known that the Shoshone took shelter in these
caves and tunnels, and found water there. Because of these mysterious stone
circles near its entrance, each about fifteen feet across, the Park staff called
this one the Indian Tunnel.
Indian Tunnel is the largest of several tunnels in the Park. It's 800 feet
long, and its cross section is as large as 30 by 50 feet. There are
collapses that admit enough light to walk from one end to the other without
the need for a flashlight.
This child won't remember her visit to the Indian Tunnel. Too bad, she got
there the easy way. The rest of us had to walk half a mile.
Not all of the mangled trees at Craters of the Moon are in the Devil's
Orchard. These are in other parts of the Park.
Near Arco, the Big Lost River flows into a depression, where it then follows
an underground aquifer to feed the Snake River. If it rains enough, the
aquifer can't handle all the flow, and for a little while the Lost River is
"found" again.
Before leaving the Snake River Plain, we took a short drive up into the
mountains for dinner in Mackay.
Mackay is at the base of Borah Peak, Idaho's highest.
This would have been a great fly-in
visit if we weren't an hour's drive away from our airplane. Everything in
this town is within walking distance of its airport.
We stopped in here, first making sure we were spurless. We were sad to learn
that Bear Bottom no longer serves food, only beer and wine. The porch roof is
supported by totem poles consisting entirely of bears.
We ended up at Ken's Club and Steak House around the corner, where we were
closely watched as we ate another ribeye dinner. We should have known better.
It was very good, but it couldn't compare with the meal we had in Sioux Falls
a few days ago.
on to Mount St. Helens
Michigan City
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Billings
EBR-1
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