Missile Silo
Note: Photo captions are time and place of WiFi connectivity.

May 24th, Part Two
No WiFi tonight, unfortunately.

Long day - just ended.  Started at 9:30am and it’s now 8:22pm.  But it was all for a good cause.  Visited EIGHT Atlas Missile Silos today… and entered TWO!  Bwa ha ha!

Fucking amazing!  Yes, I trespassed, and yes, I almost got caught once, but I’m alive and have the pictures to prove it!

I actually entered one of the sites to take pictures which was cool enough, but then I noticed that someone had used a blowtorch to cut off the locks on the entry door.  I pulled, it creaked loudly, and opened!

This was the only site that actually had the silo doors open!

The Atlas was different than the Titan II.  The Titan II silo had a sliding slab of steel-reinforced concrete that took 20 seconds to slide open.  The two-stage rocket then ignited, reached full thrust, then the cleats at the bottom were blown with small detonations.  The rocket then went skyward and on to it’s destination.

With the Atlas, it was on an elevator.  When launched, these two big doors — horizontal gates, really — swung open to the sky to slowly reveal the single-stage rocket being lifted to the surface.  Once there, the ignition sequence began and the rocket went off to its pre-determined impact point - presumably somewhere in the FSU.

Lots more to explain about all this stuff, but suffice to say, I’ve seen it all.  Even two different sites that are still in commercial use - one is an oil company headquarters (I still have to confirm this, but I think that’s the case), and the other a personal residence, just like we read about - saw ‘em both (not inside unfortunately!)

Anyway, I’m now in Clovis, New Mexico, a stone’s throw from the Texas state line.  Tomorrow I’m going over to take a look at the studio where Buddy Holly recorded ‘Peggy Sue’, and then continue north to a really cool section on Route 66.  The best part apparently.  Lots of photo ops.

That should put me on the right track towards Santa Fe by Friday afternoon.  Just in time for the long weekend here.

One thing I’ve learned… get accommodations early in the day!  Not necessarily REALLY early, just don’t leave it too late.  I drove around for an hour and a half tonight near Clovis looking for a place to rest my weary head.  Found a LaQuinta Inn that was SOLD OUT (?!) but had one room left… at US$100!  Fuck that.

So, I whipped out the GPS (that thing’s been spot on with the silos - love searching via latitude and longitude - works like a charm) and found my Clovis download.  Asked for accommodations rated cheapest to most expensive and on the first try found a HoJo Express for $29!  Fine by me.  No WiFi, but that can wait till tomorrow… which is probably when you’ll get this anyway.

I have two more silos to visit — audited 10 of the 12, not bad — but I may not bother - we’ll see.  Because of where they’re located, and because of the road system here, there’s a lot of doubling and tripling back and forth - not easy.  We’ll see what happens tomorrow.  Don’t fancy heading back toward Roswell via a different route that will take the better part of a day, then another day to get to Santa Fe.  I’ll throw the dice on that one tomorrow.

That’s it for tonight, and indeed today.  I took 170 shots today - a full 1GB chip at NEF rez.  Woo hoo!

Reporting tonight from Clovis, New Mexico: Where Buddy Holly met Peggy Sue