UsTripScottoHouse

As I mentioned, the first leg of my trip was from Santa Cruz to Portland. Thus, you would expect some pictures from Scotto's house right?

Well, when I got my first roll of film from the trip developed, the entire roll was completely overexposed. At first I thought I had set my camera incorrectly. That can happen, right? But, then I thought some more and although I do occassionally set my camera slightly wrong (wrong film speed, wrong shutter speed, etc.), rarely if ever do I set it so wrong that an entire roll of pictures comes out ruined.

Later when I was looking through the pictures (from the other rolls of film I shot on the trip), I realized I shot the first roll from Santa Cruz all the way to Wyoming. Then I put 2+2 together and got... nuclear radiation!!!

You see, on the way through the deserts of Idaho, Kevin and I stopped at EBR-1, the first power generating nuclear reactor in the world. For those of you who don't know, the US government runs a massive program in Idaho to test nuclear reactors. The site used to be called the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, but lately the name has changed to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory , or INEEL. Their homepage plays down the nuclear work, but I know first hand how extensive it is. In the 80s, my high school science class took a field trip to INEL and the tour guides told us at length about the many, many reactors littering the Idaho desert. There are fifty or more of them out there, although of course many are decommissioned.

Which brings us back to EBR-1. Kevin and I spent an hour touring the reactor, and it is awesome. You get to walk all around the plant and see what the state of the art was in 1951.

Anyway, that's the only explanation I have for why you see no pictures on this page - the film was fogged by exposure to radiation at the EBR-1 site.

I'm really not making any of this up.

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