Today, a little sight-seeing, a little riding. Ok, mostly sight-seeing, very little riding! Tomorrow we should make up for the little riding.

I wanted to go see EBR-1, which is what Arco is famous for. EBR-1 stands for Experimental Breeder Reactor 1. Arco was the very first city on the planet to be illuminated with nuclear power. Ok, that’s not really true – Hiroshima, Japan was actually the first city to be illuminated with nuclear power. What I meant is that Arco was the first city to be illuminated with ELECTRICITY produced by nuclear power. BIG difference. Here is the building that houses it:

Pretty non-descript, and it’s out there all by itself. Some pretty cool stuff inside, and they do let you take pictures. Here’s one of the control room:

I have many more, but that’s enough, trust me!

Standing outside, I noticed the smoke is worse today, as seen here:

You can barely see the mountains!

After this, lunch, then off to Mackay, ID to check out their mine, as we should be able to ride part of the roads out there, and hopefully there will be some challenge to them, and they’ll be interesting.

Well, the mine was interesting, here is a photo:

And here is the town of Mackay, Waaaayyy down there:

Quite a ways up, interesting stuff, but the ride was a bit of a disappointment. The climb was tough enough, and the scenery was spectacular, but it was a short ride. Worth the trip, though.

And just to wrap it up, here’s a tree in our campground, just because I think it looks neat. If I were to desaturate it, it would look a lot like an infrared photo:

See? Cool looking tree!