Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, SD

On Monday, we went to Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, SD.  We'd been there in 1993 with the boys. Since we'd been to multiple archaeological sites we knew more and understood the tour a lot more than in the past.

A lot of tours have changed in 23 years including this one.  First they have a theater with a 15 minute video to tell the history of the the site.  It was very well done and a good prelude to the tour.  Second they gave everyone audio headsets so we could all hear the tour guide clearly, since they run multiple groups through at staggered times.  The headsets eliminate the interference with the other groups leaders.

The site, like the one in Waco Texas, is a building constructed over the dig site.  However, in Hot Springs, they have known for years that the site of interest was a sinkhole whose boundaries are defined by a red shellfish clay.  So when they built the current structure in 1988, they just covered the land inside the red clay ring.

They have already found 61 mammoths, both Wooly and Columbian.  They also have found other animals like bears, camels, and llamas.  The large collection of animals is due to the fact that the sinkhole had sharp edges of slippery red clay, so when the animals slipped into the pool of water they couldn't get out.

The site is classified as an in situ archaeological site which means they leave as much uncovered material in place to be viewed.  They remove fossils that need better preservation and they cover some in plaster casts if needed.  The photos on Flickr would make a lot more sense if I had the commentary we heard on the tour, but I don't have that.

Badlands National Park

We drove out to the Badlands on Sunday.  In the past we had driven out on I-90 past Wall, SD and taken the main entrance, but this time we went in on a back road and got a different perspective.  We saw the usual stops at the main entrance and the visitor center, but then took off on a long loop. Along the way we stopped at a fossil education walk and met a park ranger who was from Charlotte, NC.  He is a retired teacher from East Mecklenburg High and worked the summers for the park service.  We talked for a while to catch up on stuff back home.

After we completed half of the loop, we were close to Wall, SD and decided to go the Wall Drugstore for a required visit when you come to this part of the world. They post road signs advertising free ice water, 5 cent coffee, and homemade donuts for hundreds of miles on I-90 and other roads.  It's expanded since we were there in 1993.   It was half the town then, so they basically are the town now.

We drove back to the park and picked up the loop again, but this time it was a gravel road for 20 miles.  This ride was along the rim and where the buffalo roamed.  Also there was a prairie dog town with hundreds of their hills.  We got a lot of pictures on Flickr, and I've already posted a buffalo video to Facebook.

We saw a big storm building in the distance and got some pictures of that as well.  It's amazing how far you can see things out here.  The storm was 20 miles away when we photoed it.

Mt. Rushmore

At this point we have only been to Mt. Rushmore during the day.  We want to go to the nightly lighting presentation, but the weather's not cooperating.

We drove over to Mt. Rushmore via the Custer State park entrance which took us through more tunnels and a lot of great views, but lots of switchbacks and climbs and descents on narrow roads. However, this path gave us different views of Mt. Rushmore Monument from very far away and even just as you come out of a tunnel.  On Flickr, I put some of those views from the drive over.

The monument park was busy, but well organized.  They had workers mixing the cars into the lanes to keep the cars moving and into the parking lot.  Now they have a 6 section parking deck with a guy telling you where to go.  He took one look at my truck and routed me to the top of the parking garage. They remade the support building since we were there in 1993.  In 1994 they added a new amphitheater, and in 1998 they added a 3 story building that overlooked the amphitheater to contain a museum, 2 movie theaters, and restrooms.  At the entrance they added 3 food places with one being an outdoor cafe.  It's promoted as a place to eat and watch the lighting at night.  It's all very well done.

None of your National Park passes are good here.  They change $11 for parking and admission is free. The parking pass is good until the end of the year.    

Custer State Park

We spent late Friday afternoon driving thru part of South Dakota's Custer State Park.  It's one of the best state parks in the country, in my opinion.  It's got great views, wildlife, and places to pull off the road and get out to photograph and explore.  Since we were camped in Hermosa on the west side of the park, we went in through that side on SD-36 and took the wildlife loop first.  It's mostly high plains that the bison like so the driving is easy with lots of curvy roads, but easy.  We saw bison, prairie dogs, wild burros, and antelope.  We'll probably do this loop again either early morning or dusk to try to see more wildlife.

After we came out of the loop, we took the Needles Highway which is more challenging.  Lots of narrow roads, switchback, and steep climbs and descents.  Since there were trees on the outside the drive around the switchbacks was easier to me visually, so not as much panic as San Juan Skyway. We even went up to the top of Coolidge Lookout on a gravel road.  Great views, but that ride was a little hairy.  We even made it through the Needles tunnel. I had measured the width of the truck and it was 96", so with that tunnel being officially at 100", I had 2" to spare on each side.  I slowly inched through and there was a guy from Tennessee standing there watching me who had just driven the tunnel in exactly in the same model Ram 3500. We stopped and talked to them and took some more photos.  There wasn't much traffic so we could stop and stage pictures.

After the Needles highway ended, we went toward Hill City, Mt. Rushmore, and Keystone.  We drove past the KOA Mt. Rushmore that we had camped at in 1993 with the kids.  Still looked the same except for a huge central office complex that was new to me.  Also went past the entrance to the Mt. Rushmore Monument and it was still busy late in the evening.  Went into Keystone and it had a lot more tourist trap establishments that in 1993 for sure.  Made it back to camp in time for drinks and dinner.

I'll post something on Mt. Rushmore separately but we will make multiple trips there; one in the morning sun and one at the evening lighting ceremony.  Need to get a clear night for the second visit.

Photos are on Flickr.

I hate my GPS!

Back east with the relatively close distances between places, destinations, and multiple paths, your GPS sometimes chooses odd paths, but it's not too bad.

Out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, the GPS will pick a secondary road instead of a US highway because it calculates it's a little closer.

That's how we got 26 miles down a secondary road that was okay, beautiful farm country and no traffic right up until the dreaded End of Pavement sign.  There aren't any pull-offs on this road, so I had to back down a dirt road until I could find a possible turn around.  That's an hour and a lot of diesel I'll never get back.

So now I will never trust a GPS for anything.  It's just a confirmation that our printed atlas is right and something to ridicule when it doesn't agree with our better manually planned route.

Our day reminded me of the GEICO Insurance Tarzan commercial.. GEICO Tarzan

What a drive from Grand Junction, CO to Cheyenne, WY!

We got up early on Wednesday to make a long drive up to Cheyenne, WY.  It is a good halfway point to Hermosa, SD where we will base camp for a while to revisit a lot of our favorites.

I must say that the drive across Colorado on I-70 at least to Denver is spectacular.  You start at the Utah border which looks like a lifeless planet except for a few bushes growing on the lower levels with spectacular walls of red rock 100s of feet high.  By the time we got to Grand Junction you could see how the Colorado River nourished the valley so fruit trees and wine grapes could grow, but you still had the bare rock mountains on each side of the valley.   You basically follow the Colorado river for most of the trip.  Sometimes the valley is wide and you can speed along at 70-75 MPH.  Then the valley narrows to just enough room for the railroad tracks, 4 lanes of traffic and the river.  As we got to the skiing region like Vail, Breckenridge, etc. you proceeded up and down from the valley at 8000' to the peaks of 10,000'.  I wish I could have watched more but the drive was intense.  The interstate made it much easier than your basic 2 lane mountain road, but the curves were tight for the highway speed and you had to deal with the slower 18 wheelers and the scared flatlanders.

I was never more glad to have my Ram 3500 Diesel DRW.  I had no issues with pulling the hills or driving down the steep grades with full automatic speed and engine brake control.   I hardly had to use my disc brakes.  Since I'm at GVW or 24,000lb, I'm under the limit that has to drive at 45 MPH. We passed with ease a number of Motorhomes and trailers being pulled with less truck than I have and too many of them were broken down on the side of the road.  Hopefully they were only overheated and would be able to continue after they cooled down.

If you fly into Vail to golf or ski you really miss the experience.  The amount of terrain changes we saw in 6 hours of driving was incredible. If you don't want to camp out here, I'd suggest flying into Denver and renting a 4x4 and just drive all over Colorado.

BTW, the slopes at Vail were still covered with snow, but I didn't see anyone skiing.

We picked a campground just into Wyoming call Terry Bison Ranch.  They have a thousand head of buffalo, plus cattle, camels and other game.  Great place for kids, a lot of activities.  But for us it's a one night parking place that takes Passport America Discount.

Grand Junction, CO Wineries

We needed breaks in our trip from Dolores, CO to Hot Springs, SD so we picked our first stop at Grand Junction, CO because we saw they had a large number of wineries.  A good enough reason to stop.

We camped at Junction West RV park.  It seems nice enough. As long as they have full hook-ups, and nothing blocking my satellite dish setup, we are good.  We are both fighting colds, so we are moving slow these days.  Used Yelp and Trip Advisors to pick a few wineries to visit.

We picked Masion La Belle Vie because their owner grew up in Loire Valley in France.  Their wine was good.  They had a lot of reds.  The dryness and altitude is good for the big red grapes here.  The photos above are from Masion La Belle Vie.

We picked Hermosa Vineyards next and got lost getting there because we put their address into the GPS.  Bad move.  We found it and it was not picturesque like the first winery.  It looked closed.  Nothing but a metal building.  While we were getting out of the truck the garage doors on the building opened to reveal a tasting room and the owner/winemaker standing there.

This was a pleasant surprise.  Great wines, but expensive.  He has a loyal local following so he has not distribution, no wholesale or wine club shipments; just the tasting room sales.  We has a long conversation about everything wine related.  At the end, we got into a discussion on bourbon and he mentioned a local distillery they won awards in Kentucky.

So next we went to a bourbon tasting.  It was very good, but not worth the $60 they wanted for a bottle.

We also found a liquor store that had Buffalo Trace for $22, so I bought all he had.

It was a good day for a couple of alcoholics. :-)

Scared to death

Scared to death?, really?  Yes, and I'll try to put into words what that's like.

We've been taking it slow up here at 8100' because they don't have any air to breath so everything we do is like working out at a gym.  Yes, I remember what that was like.  We spent the first day running back down 30 miles to Cortez, CO to shop for essentials and gather tourist info. Later we cooked out on the grill.  The second day we drove up to Telluride to look around and eat at Brown Dog Pizza. That ride over a peak at 10,000' was a little hairy due to the drop offs next to the road bothering me, but I made it through it.

The problems started on Friday when we decided to drive the San Juan Skyway loop, 240 miles. The photo at the top can only give you a sense of my problem because when it got really bad Martha couldn't get a photo because she was on the side that was the closest to the edge.  This picture shows how the roads has just 2 feet from the white line to the drop off of several thousand feet.  Note that they don't use many guard rails in Colorado.  When they have enough edge to put a guard rail they figure you don't need it and when there isn't enough room to put a rail, well...

I have a small problem with heights.  It's sort of bothers me to look out from a balcony on the 50th floor but the wall or balcony rail makes we feel safer so I can enjoy the view.  Same thing with scenic put-outs where I can get the great view without having to be 3' from the edge. So to get by areas like the one at the top, I just keep looking at the road ahead and stare at the yellow line.  I think my fear of heights gets amplified when driving at 10,000' because the lack of air makes me light headed.

Since we had driven to Telluride the previous day we decided to make the loop counterclockwise and go down to Durango, then back up to Silverton.  The first 3/4 of the drive from Durango to Silverton was easy and picturesque. But the last few miles were filled with switchbacks and drop offs that started at the white line.  Literally, the white paint was the last part of the road with a thousand foot drop off.  It also didn't help that a lot of the ascending left turn curves around a point immediately descended .  So visually it looked like the road ended.  The speed limit was 10 mph on these turns but that was way too fast for me.  Just staring at the yellow line was not working at this point so I waited until there was no opposing traffic and I'd ride into their lane.

When we drove back down the mountain to Silverton which was just a high valley of 9300' we stopped at the visitor center mostly to collect my nerves and rest.  The nice lady at the visitor center told us that the drive up to Silverton was nothing compared to the drive on over to Ouray on the Million Dollar highway.  The next time I want to go to Silverton, I'll take the train out of Durango which was $100. Looks cheap to me, now.

Leaving Silverton I could see the start of the climb we'd have to make, but since I saw a Ram 3500 like mine pulling a 40' Redwood RV I figured it couldn't be that bad.  About 5 miles out of Silverton on the way to Ouray, they had traffic stopped both ways for construction. They were blasting and removing rock.  We sat for 30 minutes before the follow-me car led us through.  This part was not bad because you had all the construction trucks on your right as you went by.  But after we got past that, every few miles you'd have the switchbacks and outside peaks that had no margin past the white line just like the ride into Silverton.

I hear the views are spectacular but I never saw anything but the yellow line.  When there was room for a scenic overview we'd pull off and take a few photos.  We've put them on Flickr.

All of these small tourist towns like Telluride, Silverton, and Ouray are visions out of the 1800's when mining and drinking were the major activities.  We could have spent a lot of time in each, but having had lunch and explored a little in Telluride the day before, we didn't stop much in the other towns on the Skyway.  We wanted to do the whole loop in one day.

After Ouray, the rest of the drive is more high pasture and much easier to handle.  So we rode past Telluride to our campground a little past Rico.

Not sure where the people who live in these towns shop because other than tourist shops and convenient stores we saw no where to buy groceries except Cortez and Durango.  No Safeways, Krogers, Walmarts or Harris-Teeters.

Now that I've safely survived the San Juan Skyway, I can tell you that while the views are spectacular, I will NOT be driving it again.  Those of you who decide to do it can just post your photos and videos.  In fact put a GoPro video camera on your dash and then we can all relive the horror of the drive again.

Moving from Grand Canyon to Dolores, CO

After spending a week in Williams, AZ at the Grand Canyon Hotel and RV park (and kennel) we had heard enough trains in the middle of the night.  Great park, but too many trains.  This hotel/RV park also own the Grand Canyon Railroad and are on contract to the National Park to run the train into the park everyday.  They seemed to keep the RV park and hotel full most nights.  We had a lot of fun in Williams at all the Route 66 restaurants, bars, shops, and art galleries.

So we left Williams on Monday morning and drove up the edge of the Painted Desert and through Monument Valley.

One of the oddities of this trip was, we became the tourist attraction during a lunch stop at Burger King.  We stopped at the BK in Kayenta, AZ and it was a large one.  They had several buses and RVs parked in the back in a big gravel lot.  The buses were filled with vacationers from Switzerland and they had never seen a fifth wheel 40' long being pulled by a heavy duty pickup.  So several of the tourist came up and took pictures of us and the trailer and had tons of questions.

We overnighted in Mexican Hat so we could have a steak at the Swingin Steak Restaurant.  We got there early enough to get some photos of some of the rock formations on the edge of a thunderstorm. Made for some interesting pictures.  I have those on Flickr.

On Tuesday we drove on to Dolores, CO and picked Priest Gulch RV campground on the Dolores river in the San Juan National Forest.  We heard about the campground from new friends we made in Williams, AZ.  Charlie and Jennie are also Montana RV owners.  They also told us about a road trip to do up in southern Colorado; the San Juan Skyway.  We will be doing that this week.  More on that later.

The Grand Canyon

We had a perfect day to visit the Grand Canyon.  The weather was cool, sunny, and clear. That made for better pictures and easier walking.  We drove up instead of riding the train, which would have been fun, but it's would have limited our time in the park.  We got there before the train arrived, but had to wait 20 minutes to get past the gate.  We had the Senior Lifetime pass which was only $10 when we got it, but it saved us $30 at the Grand Canyon National Park.  They had 4 lanes and all were 20 cars deep.  I'm glad we were here now and not in the summer.

After finding a parking place we jump on the Blue shuttle bus to go to the visit center/bus depot. They have 3 bus loops, the Blue Shuttle loops around the middle of the park and connects to the Red and Orange loops.  The Red loop takes you to the Hermits Rest out west and the Orange Loop takes you east to Yaki Point.  The Visitor center is walking distance to most of the rest of the park.  But that's a matter of point of view.  We road the bus to the visitor center with 4 girls with backpacks who had just finished 150 miles hike to the bottom and back up, and around the Colorado river basin.

There were tons of foreign visitors and too many of them climbed out past the safety barriers to take selfies.  I ask a Ranger if they had many fall and he said they had more than you'd guess, but only the fatalities make the national news.

The trip out to Hermits Rest is only accessible in the busy season by the Red shuttle bus and was a part of the park we've never seen.  It is where you have the best view of the Colorado River from 5000' above.

On the way out of the park we took the east exit past a number of view points that were also new to me.  At the end we went to the Desert View Watchtower. The east exit took us past much better views than the route we took into the park from Williams.  We exited through Cameron and then south to Flagstaff.  We stopped in Flagstaff at Cracker Barrel, which was our first stop at a national chain restaurant this trip, but we needed the taste of home cooking and there isn't any out west except at Cracker Barrel.

All in all a great day.  While I'm not a fan of crowds, the Park service handles them well, at least in the spring.  I have photos uploaded to Flickr, here.

Williams and Sedona

We had a long drive from Benzon, AZ up to Williams, AZ on Monday and picked the Grand Canyon Railroad and Hotel RV park. We got a good rate for 7 days so we are using it as a base camp. I'm surprised how busy they are.  Can't imagine what the summer looks like.

Since we bypassed Sedona on the way up, we decided to go back down there in just the truck on Tuesday to see what all the fuss was about.  We'd heard it was a must see.  Well, not so much in my mind.  Our first mistake was to take the scenic route 89A down from Flagstaff, thinking it was, well scenic. 

The road was very curvy with very few pull off for taking pictures.  If you found a wide spot in the road it was already taken.  Keep in mind this is Tuesday in early May, not July 4th weekend.  We found a few pull-offs, that charged to park and take pictures and they were full.

So I was not in a great frame of mind when we came into the "city".  Finally found a public parking lot, but not designed for trucks, so we sort of cheated and used Martha's still valid handicap parking sticker since there were lots of those in the lot.

Next we hiked to the main drag for some lunch and found a nice place.  Our goal was a place with a view.  Found one, took some photos while we enjoyed the most expensive hamburger and grilled cheese & mushroom sandwich I've every seen. 

After lunch we looked into taking a jeep tour off road in hopes to get a better view of the red mountains.  $90 per person!!  You can get a special deal on Southwest Airlines cheaper than that.  So we passed on that.  Maybe I can find a video of the trip on Youtube.

So we headed back up to Williams and stopped to take some pictures and got a good one of the high peak you see out of Flagstaff.  It was still snow covered. (Link to Flickr photos)

After a stop for groceries, we went bar hopping.  The first one was clearly a tourist place.  $7 for a craft beer that made me miss the pubs back home with their $4 beers that are clearly better.

On to a local bar next.  It's famous we are told, mainly because it's the oldest bar in Williams, first to reopen after Prohibition, and has a theater as part of the bar that was the first one in Arizona.  It's 110 years old, if I remember right.  It's called Sultana.  Met a retired local couple who moved here 5 years ago after retiring and RVing around the USA for 6 years.  Picked Williams because it was a small interesting town.  They still ride their Harley's up to Sturgis, SD when the need arises. 

So the day ended on a positive note aided by mass quantities of alcohol.

People you meet

This won't be new information to my RVing friends as they already know all this stuff. We've stopped at all kinds of RV campground on this trip and met a lot of folks.  All have been friendly and outgoing.  Much more outgoing than in any regular neighborhood. It's so typical of RVer's in my opinion.  It's probably due to the fact that you aren't in any place too long and if you want any human interaction you have to be willing to just walk up and start talking to folks.

The parks we've been at the most have been SKP co-op parks.  SKP is synonym for Escapees which is the real name of the RV club. As co-op parks, all the lots are leased by the owners and visitors like us can rent the sites when the owners are out traveling.  In the southwest most of these parks are full in the winter when it's cold back home and almost empty in the summer when it's hot here.

These co-op parks are interesting.  The lease holder can add little building on the lot for all kinds of purposes besides storage.  They can be living rooms, laundry rooms, porches, etc. Whatever they need space for when they are here for the six months they are here in the winter.

These parks have tons of activities in the winter to keep folks busy.  In addition to that some of the people find jobs or volunteer work to fill their time.  I met a retired attorney yesterday who filled his time in winter with being an arbitrator for civil cases under $10k for the county court system.

It's also interesting what people do in the summers.  Some just go visiting and touring around the country, somewhere it's cooler than the southwest.  Others have jobs lined up.  Working for a state or national park.  This usually means they get all their campground fees paid, and sometimes a small salary.  But most important to some is the access they get in the parks.  They are cleared to go where park visitors can't go and see some things that aren't viewed by normal visitors.  They are also there for all the great events, like animal migrations or births of young, and don't have to get lucky to catch something interesting the way normal visitors have to.  Some people have co-op sites up north and here in the southwest and just move as the weather changes.

Obviously the folks that do this are full timers, meaning they sold their house and everything they owned that wouldn't fit in the RV.  As one fellow I talked to yesterday said, he traded possessions for experiences.  A large percentage of these folks are experts at living inexpensively.  Most have solar so they can live for a week or so without any hookups for as little as $5 a day. They also know all the great food places where locals eat and avoid the high priced tourist chain restaurants.

A trend I found interesting at SKP Saguaro Co-op in Benson, AZ is having 2 campers.  A number of these folks have setup their original RV like a 5th wheel trailer on the site and have never moved it.  So they buy RV's like Class Bs, or truck campers so they can go boon-docking as a group for short trips while they are in residence at the Co-op.  They have a big storage area near the campground to park their second RV or boats, etc.

Ft. Huachuca

We took a quick trip over to Ft. Huachuca, AZ.  The fort dates back to when the frontier settlers need protection from the Apache and Mexicans.  It became the fort that trained and housed the 10 Cavalry commonly called the Buffalo Soldiers.  Until desegregation come to the Army after WWII, the black cavalry soldiers were all trained and commanded from Ft. Huachuca.

When the army got serious about electronic signal intelligence, they needed a electronically quiet place to do their research.  The valley where Ft Huachuca is located provided that dead zone without much interference.   So beside the frontier history, and the Buffalo Soldier history, there is the SIGINT history and current work for Military Intelligence (MI).

Because it's an active military base, we had to clear security and get badges to enter.  The fort is right under some mountains and has a great view in all directions.  We went up the top and took some photos looking into the valley.



There are really 2 museums.  The legacy museum and the MI museum.  We did both and we enjoyed both.  The legacy museum is located in a part of the fort that is original.  The museum is housed in the old officers club.



The MI museum is in a more modern section of the fort.  It's located in the same building as the MI Library and has a lot of interesting artifacts like a piece of the Berlin Wall, an Enigma machine, etc. I remember when Intel shipped tons of Xenix 8086 computers to Ft. Huachuca for use in MI.  I never knew what they used them for.

I posted some other photos on Flickr

Tombstone revisited

On Monday we went back to Tombstone to finish looking at stuff that was too busy on Saturday. The city was less crowded but they still had a nice crowd. Everything was still open.

We went to the Courthouse museum and looked at a lot of the artifacts.  It's interesting how the names you remember from the Tombstone movies are listed all over town, but when you dig into the facts you find the truth or a better, more believable story.

The courthouse had some of the old rooms still furnished as in the 1880's and the courtroom had been restored back to the 1880 look.


Next we when to Big Nose Kate's for lunch. Nice old western bar. The food was surprising good. Also got to try some Prickly Pear Tequila.


After lunch we went to a unique museum. Its big draw is the oldest rose bush.



The owners of the museum are the original owners of the house and they saved everything, so there some great family photos and artifacts. Like one the original owner and his son sitting with Geronimo at a peace conference. Also one of the family members was a Doolittle raider in WWII.

I have a lot of photos on Flickr

Titan Missile Museum

This was a unique museum. There can't be any other missile museum on a Titan II silo site with a Titan II missile inside because the Salt II treaty that Reagan signed with the USSR required us to blow up all the other silos and dismantling all the missiles. There is a special exception for this silo and missile. It's allowed to exist for educational purposes, but the lid of the silo must be opened so the Russians can use satellites to verify the missile is not active, plus they can come over and spend $8.50 for a ticket and take the tour like we did.

What you see when you get to the museum is the building they built to house the offices, gift shop and briefing room, all of which didn't exist when the site was active.  Everything else is underground with lids a few feet above the ground.  There are also a lot of nice cactus beds that were flowering this time of year.


You go into the silo via a set of 55 steps the way the airmen did when they reported to work. There is also a handicapped elevator that use to be for freight.


Since the silo is hardened against a direct nuclear strike there was a lot of thick walls made of reinforced concrete and steel.  Doors were 4', 6', and 8' feet thick as you got deeper into the silo.


Once we got into the control room where the officers would launch the missiles, the guide, who actually worked there when he was in the Air Force, walked us through the process of how they would get the command to launch a missile if it were every required. There were alarms, flashing light and recorded messages to put a little real life into the tour.

Next we went to the part of the silo where the missile was housed, a few hundred feet away through a tunnel.



From the photos you can see we were about half way up the missile looking up.

Next we went outside to see the missile from above, which you could do because the large concrete lid was slide open.


Inside the museum there were a few interesting displays including the ones related to some movies shot at the museum including one of the Star Trek movies.

I have a number of additional photos on Flickr