Day 4 Part 3 - Los Alamos, New Mexico

Lisa and Jason's Japanese Adventure

Next stop, Los Alamos, New Mexico - Birthplace of the Atomic Bomb.	In Los Alamos, I paid a visit to the Bradbury Science Museum.	The museum is home to lots of de-nuked atomic bombs.
...And squished pennies.	They have a Vela satellite, which used to be part of America's first space-based nuclear explosion detection system.	There's also lots of declassified documents on display about the bomb and building it.
There's a replica security system like they use at Los Alamos National Laboratory.	They even have an old Cray Supercomputer. This Cray weiged 5-1/2 tons and took 30 construction workers to install. It ran about as fast as my Mac G4. The computer I'm typing this on has three times the processor speed.	Their big exhibit is a replica of Fat Man, the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki. I don't know why I posed like this. After the picture was taken, I thought about my visit to Hiroshima, Japan, where Fat Man's brother Little Boy was dropped. Draping my arm over the bomb like a new car or prize buck somehow seemed much less appropriate.


I was surprised to see a portion of the museum dedicated to outside opinions and exhibits. There is an angry battle still being fought over whether or not dropping the bomb on Japan was the right thing to do.	Both sides of the argument had well-researched statements, as well as photos to support their arguments.	The pro-bomb side generally says the bomb saved lives by avoiding the carnage of a full-on invasion of Japan.
The anti-bomb side says the bomb is a terrible weapon of mass destruction and should never have been used. Some believe that the Japanese were ready to surrender without it.	One display argued the U.S. was already causing mass casualties with firebombing of cities.	It's an argument that's been going on since the bomb was dropped. This letter about it from President Truman was on display.
After I'd seen all the bombs I could handle for one day, I headed North for Colorado.	I wanted to see some mountains.	Before long, I saw SNOW on the side of the road! The first snow of the trip!
This was the only car I saw for over an hour once I got into the mountains.	Hail, hail Fredonia: 4,671 feet. Not the highest I'd go, but the only town featured in a Marx Brothers movie...	I had no map of Colorado, so I ended up crossing back and forth across the border in three or four different places. Late that night I crossed the infamous Glen Canyon Dam.
Finally I ended up at the Grizzly Inn in Alamosa, Colorado.