Happy birthday to my son, Michael, who is now 33. What a great joy you have been through the years. I'm proud of you and think you're a wonderful man. I wish you many more years filled with happiness, contentment, mental stimulation and satisfaction with your life.
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Our adventure today started off with a tour at the Minuteman Missile Historical Site in South Dakota just north of Badlands National Park. Before the tour, we checked in at the Visitor Center. Our free tickets had the tour time printed on them. It's about 5-6 miles from the Visitor Center to the Launch Control Facility, so we had to allow time to drive there and arrive on time. Each tour can take a maximum of seven people. (That's all the elevator will hold.)
Being a
child in the late 50s and early 60s, I was aware the Bay of Pigs
conflict in Cuba was a war waiting to happen. The U.S. and Russia had
nuclear bombs and were threatening each other with those bombs. In
elementary school, we had to practice getting under our desks with our
arms over our necks to protect them. I remember rations being sold in
the grocery stores and people feared that we were going to have bombs
dropping on us.
What
I didn't know at the time was our country had hundreds of bombs in
silos in SD aimed at the Soviet Union. It would take approximately 30
minutes from the time the order was given in the U.S. to the time the
bombs hit their target in the USSR. Bombs would fly over the North Pole. It was a scary time with the threat
of war looming over us.
On our
tour, we visited one of the Launch Control Facilities where young men
(aged 19-35) kept a 24-hour vigil. If the order was given to launch the
missiles, it took two of them to turn the keys and send the missiles on
their way. Luckily they never had to exercise that option! The tour
included the upstairs living quarters and the underground bunker with an
eight-ton blast door. Very interesting.
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Double click to read. |
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Peacekeeper Vehicle |
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Underground humor--What's painted on the eight-ton blast door. |
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Launch Control Facility--underground. |
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Command Center. |
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Who staffed this facility. |
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What it looks like from outside the gate. |
After our guided tour at the Launch Control Facility, we drove four miles to one of the silo sites for a self-guided cell phone tour. This site is where we viewed the silo with a missile in it (deactivated). Pretty fascinating stuff to learn the story about who was responsible for the bombs.
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Missile silo site, South Dakota. |
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Looking down into silo at missile top. |
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Bob viewing missile in silo. |
Badlands National Park was our next stop. We stopped at viewpoints along the scenic drive, Ben Reifel Visitor Center, and hiked the 3/4 mile Door trail (no shade in the 92 degree heat of the day). I wanted to hike the Window and Notch Trails as well, but was so hot after the first hike, we skipped the other hikes and opted to drive the scenic road and view from the truck with the air conditioner on.
It was a long day and we couldn't wait to get home and relax. Whew.
Travel Bug out.
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