We started off this road trip like we start every road trip... with an egg McMuffin. 'Cause lets be real, there's hardly anything more delicious and convenient for the start of a road trip than that! The weather was pristine, traffic was light, our stomachs were full, and the day was ours to enjoy! We took I-40 East for about 60 miles and turned south in Cookeville. After just another 15 miles through the sticks, we made it to Burgess Falls State Park. As you can imagine, the main attraction is a series of waterfalls on a small river.
We were greeted at the beginning of the walk by this sign which cautioned of a "strenuous hike".
Fortunately, the hike wasn't too bad. The part of the trail that was actually considered strenuous was a series of switchbacks at the end of the trail that we avoided. One of the best parts of the walk was that the waterfalls (a series of 3) got progressively bigger as we went along. It would have been such a bummer to go the other way!
Ok Ok, so a pristine glacial run-off it's not. But hey, we gotta take what we can get here in Tennessee!
The map had the audacity to list the "bridge" in the picture below as a shortcut to the end of the trail. How about NO...
The trail was riddled with tortuous roots like the ones here. At this point we were thinking that maybe by "strenuous" they meant "easy to dodge and pretty to photograph roots on trail"
Making the trail fairly muddy at times were these small but beautiful trickling streams.
After a 20-minute hike, we made it to "middle falls". As I'm sure all of you know, one of the most wonderful things about a waterfall is the sound. It's so incredible to see tremendous volumes of water pouring over a ledge with massive energy, and the whooshing sound that accompanies it just adds so much to the powerful presence of the scene.
Obviously this video doesn't do either the video or the audio experience any justice, but it's the best we can do!
After enjoying that view for a few minutes, we continued on towards the "big falls". Fortunately, the name was appropriate and we got quite a view!
My favorite part about this waterfall was the mist that shot out at the bottom. It made a nice rainbow that I hope you can see in the video. It's probably best to watch this on full screen!
We walked back to our car and drove further east to Oak Ridge. It's a fascinating city that came about in 1942 as a part of the Manhattan Project which was the name for the Federal operation to develop the atomic bomb. I can't give you a history lesson that is any better than what is on Wikipedia, so I'll just link to that page for those of you that are interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee
For those who ain't got time for that, the city was established as the location for the refinement of Uranium-238 (a stable, non-radioactive element) into Uranium-235, a very rare, very radioactive isotope that we hoped would allow for nuclear fission. Only about 0.7% of the Uranium on earth is of the 235 isotope variety. Refinement was expensive and required tons of man-power. Sorry, man and woman-power. In fact, the city which started out as little more than some scattered farms was transformed into a super-secret city of over 75,000 people in 3 years. The Uranium that was enriched here went on to be used in the "Little Boy" bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Impressively, less than a kilogram of Uranium-235 underwent fission which resulted in an explosion with an equivalent yield of 32,000,000 pounds of TNT.
So it is in the wake of the incredible history of this city that the American Museum of Science and Energy exists. Not surprisingly then, a substantial portion of the museum is dedicated to telling the story of Oak Ridge in the 1940's.
A large portion of the museum was pictures and text. Aka, not the best blog material. Sorry.
But there were quite a few cool artifacts like this book of coffee ration tickets!
Heather is at the controls of a calutron. It was a device that used magnetic fields to separate the different Uranium isotopes.
Here's a picture of several calutrons being monitored. In total, there were over 1,100 of these machines in Oak Ridge. Amazingly, these women were recruited and trained for this job without being told what they were doing. They were just instructed to monitor the gauges and make sure the dial stayed between fixed values. If something went wrong, they could make adjustments. It wasn't until after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan that many workers realized what exactly they had been working on.
This was both Heather's and my favorite picture taken by photographer Ed Westcott.
They had one of the actual houses on display! This example is 24' square and is a 2-bed 1-bath arrangement. Over 1,600 of this particular model were built at a cost of $3,500 each.
After learning everything we could about the city of Oak Ridge, it was time to go upstairs for some quality science shenanigans!
After we finished at the museum, we grabbed a bite at the most incredible pizza place, called Big Ed's Pizza. Seriously, we've been thinking about that place all day! If you're ever on I-40 between Nashville and Knoxville, it's definitely worth your while to head into Oak Ridge for a pizza.
And that concluded our Saturday! We've been inspired by our friend Bob who made a bucket list of things to do in Nashville before he moves to California this Spring. We've made our own list and will surely be including some of these things here as we cross them off our own list. The weather was a perfect 65 degrees today without a cloud in the sky. After surviving a few doses of polar vortices, I think we can speak for most people when we say we're truly looking forward to Spring. Draco is going to have surgery on Wednesday to hopefully remove a pretty big growth on his side. Be looking for a post about him in the coming weeks!
With that, we hope you enjoyed reading our stories and that this blog finds you well as always. Until next time...
