Very good guessing, you win my little contest!
*Big Round of Applause*
*Shiny Gold Star for You*
Kudos to Krissy for guessing the unique place we visited on Sunday. Krissy, the bragging rights are all yours! :-D
I don't really have a second prize for Rebecca, but how about a shoutout for your technology blog - everyone should go check it out, it's Mrs. Mecomber's Scrapbook. It's quite a gem!
Anyway, yes we visited the Atlas Missile Silo near Lewis, NY in the Adirondacks. As you know, we LOVE the Adirondacks and just bought a small piece of property there, so it was a bonus to have a great reason to travel up that way again. I found out that the missile silo was going to be open to the public in an article at Adirondack Almanac, and then I proceeded to read more in an article in the Press Republican. I forwarded it to DH who said, "Hey, I'd like to go see this! Wanna go?" I figured, why not! I don't need a big excuse to visit the Adirondacks again. So we left at 6:30am Sunday morning and traveled up to the site, not really sure what to expect. Well, we were totally blown away! It was SO COOL! The owner of the site was there in a tent where he had us sign releases (in case we got hurt - it is after all, a big hole in the ground!), and he also had drinks and snacks. There was no charge to visit the silo, which is pretty awesome! We were given some informative paperwok and then went off to explore. We took a million pictures, but here's a few to give you an idea of what it was like:
The entrance to the living quarters / control room was that grey doorway to the left.
If you read the articles linked above, it talks about how the designer has renovated the silo and made living quarters out of part of it. It's not exactly a cozy or fancy place - no chandeliers hanging from the ceiling here!
The original control panel, minus most of its dials and switches.
What better decor for a nice table than a bowl of fruit and...a geiger counter!
If you're interested in reading more about Alexander Michael's amazing project you can go to www.siloboy.com. Mr. Michael even gave DD a "Siloboy.com" cookie when we signed in. The whole thing was WAY COOL.
Now of course, if you know us at all, our adventure didn't end there, but I'll save that for later in the week. :-)
The end.
Well, thank you!
ReplyDeleteThe Adirondack Almanac was where I found the information too! I did a Google search using your clues, (the big one being geiger counter=nuclear site), and found that there are a number of silos in the Adirondacks. But, there was no information about one that was only opened on Sunday. Then I looked on the geocaching website, thinking maybe there was a geocache there...but, no. Then I thought, maybe there's an article in some local newspaper...and viola! Finally! The information I craved! :)
It was the thrill of the hunt, or procrastination from the big basket of laundry I should have been folding while the baby slept.......
Very cool, where is the red button?lol.
ReplyDeleteSome linky love is a great consolation prize, lol. I like your photos. If it wasn't so far away, I'd be checking it out. So somebody lives down there??
ReplyDeleteWow - that really is something. A throw back from the past but still a part of today's environment.
ReplyDeleteVery cool! I'd visit it if we make our way out there.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post Carole. I didn't know that there were ICBM sites in the Adirondacks. I will put this on my list of places to visit. My father was a newspaper reporter in the '60's. He toured a huge underground bomb shelter that was owned by Exxon (or whatever they were back then). I am not sure if it was in the Adirondacks or the Catskills. They were going to use it to track their tanker fleet in the event of a disaster. I grew up in New Jersey. We used to pass a NIKE missle base on our way to Beach Haven at the shore. They were defensive missiles and they had a model of one right at the entrance to the base. I am so glad that we never had to use any of these things.
ReplyDelete