If, after checking my current route on the previous map, anyone can suggest something unusual to veer off to, please let me know.
Like best snow cones in the world, largest Paul Bunyun (yes there are several), favorite swimming hole, local brew, cheese steak not in Philly. You get the idea.
Aww yeah!! I saw your route goes through the Pocatello and Idaho Falls, Idaho area, and I have one for there. And then if you're close enough to Bozeman, MT, I have a two-fer there.
Experimental Breeder Reactor-I (EBR-I) - INL
EBR-1 (Experimental Breeder Reactor 1) was the first nuclear reactor in the world to be used to generate electricity, in 1951. It is a museum site now, and they do daily tours of it, but that's only during the summer half of the year--from Memorial Day through Labor Day. It's a pretty fascinating piece of history. So that's about a 20-some mile detour off of I-15 near Blackfoot, ID.
Craters of the Moon is near there too, with some neat caves (bring a headlamp), but you probably don't want to be looking around there during the middle of summer with the black volcanic rock radiating the 106 degree heat. But if you're going during a cooler part of the year, it's interesting.
And in Bozeman, MT, there are two very interesting museums, about two blocks away from each other, on either side of the Montana State University football stadium.
Home
Museum of the Rockies is one of those really big regional science and history museums that has some excellent dinosaur fossil exhibits.
American Computer and Robotics Museum
American Computer and Robotics Museum is obviously smaller than the really big Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, which I've also been to, but the one is Bozeman is amazing. They have some of the computers from the NASA space missions. They have one of the actual remaining Nazi Enigma encoding machines, and a display about creating the machines to crack that code. And there's stuff about programmed punch cards being used mechanically for weaving machines to make tapestries in the 1800's. And when I read the book Ready Player One, there is a scene where he is writing about a character working his way through levels in this virtual museum of the history of video game consoles, until he gets to the very bottom level, with the very first video game. It was called "Tennis for Two", and it was basically the precursor to Pong, but hand-built in a wooden box, with vacuum tubes and stuff. And when I read that, I was bouncing up and down, because I had seen that actual original in a display case in Bozeman.
As someone for whom computers and electronics and video games have been deeply involved in my life--in hobbies and career--I found it amazing.
You can do a nice day of this, where you do Museum of the Rockies in the morning, and then go over to the Computer museum, because it's only open from noon to 4PM.
