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Heading south again and back in the U.S. we stopped for the night just off the Flathead Lake, Montana.  The largest natural lake in the western US.  160 mile shoreline and water covers nearly two-hundred square miles of Montana - and at 300 feet deep.  It is a pretty neat area to spend time at in the summers.  We stayed at a KOA outside of the town of Polson.

The next day was the Polson Cherry Festival.  We drove into town and spent a few hours at this local fair.  In one of the shops the had footwear that Capri had to try on, not quite her size.

Here we are sampling the Cherries.  Amazing there were not many of them for sale, it was such a hard cold winter, they were delayed a couple weeks from ripening.

Just some of the "entertainment" of this festival.

South of Polson a ways is the National Bison Range.  It wasn't to far off our route so we checked it out.

The mountain views up and down this valley are really nice.

The Bison range did not end up as nice as we would have thought.  They tell you the areas along the 20 mile route that you will see all kinds of various wildlife.  Unfortunately, they were all in hiding is guess.  We only saw 2 small herds of bison and about 5 prong horn sheep.

This clever bison was standing in front of the wrong way sign, trying to get the tourists to drive that way and off a cliff for revenge of its ancestors.  The only reason we survived the trick is that it took me to long to get the camera out and he walked away.

Along the freeway in Montana there were several billboards advertising another local festival.  We decided to skip this one.

Below is our campsite at Dillon Idaho, just a overnight stop on our way south.

We took a detour off the freeway and headed over to Arco, Utah and stopped at the ERB-1 museum.  The ERB-1 is the first breeder reactor in the world and the first atomic reactor to produce electricity.  The "breeder" reactor is one the makes its own fuel as a by product of the fission reaction going on.

You do a self tour and have access to everything.  Below is the control room.

One of the main discoveries here was caused by an accidental meltdown.  Jake somehow managed to recreate the exact events while pushing buttons.   The red button in front of Lori is the "shutdown" button that did not get pushed since they did not realize what was happening.

Below is the actual reactor housing.  About 6 feet thick concrete.

They have the experiment areas still there.  Below is one that you use remote arms to move radioactive stuff around inside the chamber.  You can see all the lines in the foreground, those are from each pane of lead glass, 36 total that allowed them to see without radioactive leaks.

There are some of the remote arms you can still play with.  It was amazingly agile considering they are completely mechanical and not motor assisted.  It was like a video game of the 50's

Below is an image of a couple of test racks for the Nuclear Aircraft Engines projects they did in the late 50's  They completed the project to they point that they did work.  Most of what you see in these 2 story beasts are for the containment and information gathering of the tests and the actual power plant and engines are actually a small part of what is here. The project was cancelled by Kennedy, because he thought it would be to dangerous in case of a crash.

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