July 25, 2015 – Sunny, 80 degrees
Miles Today: 64
Miles to Date: 4,556
States to Date: 19
I continued my journey along US 40 into Utah. The scale is grander than Colorado, the road kill more exotic (bucks and snakes), the shoulder a cyclists puzzle of different pavements and rumble strips irregular as crispy bacon.
I left early to avoid the wind and was in Vernal by ten. I was in Vernal ten years ago or so at the start point for a family rafting trip. The town has grown in size but not in my affection. It’s hard to love a place so naturally beautiful befouled by the detritus of our energy business. The air should be so fresh. Instead it is heavy and rank.
Beyond Vernal the Uintah Basin is stark and gorgeous, except for the drilling sites. Around fifty miles I needed a break and sought shade. I spotted a row of trees, which turned out to line the driveway of a rare house. As I slowed to see if it might be suitable spot, I met Darlene and her granddaughter searching the roadside for a stray dog that came by their place and then ran off. I’m a sucker for Pamela Anderson types. Darlene’s ample figure and platinum hair were offset by the most gorgeous nails I’d ever seen. She invited me to rest in the shade while they searched. I enjoyed a bit of breeze. Unfortunately, they found the dog on the far shoulder, yet another road kill victim. Darlene used the dog to lecture me on being careful. The speckled pink nail of her pointer finger dazzled me. Then I pedaled, refreshed and careful, toward Roosevelt.
The Uintah Basin is an ancient seabed, which explains both the dinosaurs and the oil. More recently it was home to the Ute Indians, whose reservation is centered at Fort Duchesne. Several tribal businesses line US 40, but what caught my eye was the Fort Duchesne Cemetery, one of the most remarkable places I’ve encountered on my trip. It’s a barren place of hard furled flags, garish plastic flowers, antler ornaments and markings of Americans who died much younger than most of us, set off the highway just enough for cars to ignore but not so far as to be serene. A woman and her daughter vacated a mini-van and placed two fresh plastic bouquets on a man’s grave. I did not ask her about tomorrow. This was the kind of place where tomorrow and today mingle in a way Native people understand and Westerners only guess about.
I got to the Frontier Motel on Roosevelt’s main street before three and had a nice conversation with the clerk, also owner, about her seven children and their interest in cycling. The Frontier cost a notch above my usual joint, so I was disappointed the pool wasn’t open and I had to make several calls to get the Internet to work. I want to patronize local places, but everything is easier at the budget chains. I finally abandoned my room and settled into a booth at the Frontier Grill, where the Internet worked great and I had my first full restaurant meal alone – soup, salad bar, steak, baked potato, vegetable medley, scone, and peach cobbler a la mode: a very satisfying treat.
You might wonder about a scone in a restaurant in rural Utah. Not to worry. It was fried dough, served with honey, under a gussied-up name. There’s nothing British about this part of the world.
d over 200,000 visitors in the first twelve months since opening; we used to average 100,000. This month we have over fifty events planned here. Most people who attend have a North Dakota connection. They are from here, Minnesota or the West coast; many North Dakotans have moved to Washington, Oregon and California. They come home and they visit here.”
North Dakota in 2015 is buzzing with economic energy from the oil and gas boom. A similar boom occurred in the early 1960’s, when our government built three hundred silos and thirty alert facilities here in less than two years. Like the energy boom, most of the effort was underground. All one can see of missile silos are concrete pads set off the road with chain link fences. Alert facilities are unassuming wood frame buildings. When decommissioned, the underground vaults were filled with concrete, the surface structures sold off. Except for Oscar-Zero, which the State obtained in 2009 to create a museum. Less than twenty years after closing, Oscar-Zero seems both amazing and primitive.
A bit of logistics. Ten men staffed each alert facility at all times. Two Air Force officers occupied the underground missile control room. Eight Air Force staff remained above: a facility manager, a cook, plus two, three person security teams. The officers worked twenty-four hours underground, and then had seventy-two hours back in Grand Forks. The above ground team worked three days on, three days off. The manager ran operations. The cook was second in command and staffed the convection oven food packets (“A meal plan for men designed by men,” according to Guinn) One security team remained on site and traded off staffing the front desk that overlooked the entrance gate (with a shot gun at his side). The other security team was in the field monitoring their ten designated silos. The only person who stayed at one alert facility was the manger; everyone else rotated among the fifteen facilities in the wing. Each facility was identical, their staff interchangeable.
A security door near the living quarters leads to 9000-pound capacity freight elevator. Guinn took me fifty feet down. “They excavated an area the size of a football field, 60 feet deep, to build the underground portion of each alert facility.” At the base are two egg-shaped concrete containers. The elevator shaft is not blast-proof. Huge steel doors that make bank vaults look skimpy flank the elevator. A fourteen-ton equipment door leads to Launch Controls Equipment (LCE), a room full of mechanical devices that Guinn describes as the heart of the operation. A smaller human door, just as thick, leads to the Launch Controls Center (LCC), where the two officers resided during their shift. Guinn calls LCC the brain. I’m struck by the Cold War logic that humans are the brain while machines the heart. These days, we would probably reverse those designations.
When the Grand Forks wing of the Minuteman Missile System closed, the local economy took a hit. The silos were powered by local utilities with generator backup. They used so much power than when they closed a local utility went out of business. Guinn hopes that the current boom doesn’t end so dramatically. “I hope the boom lands gently. It’s hard to compete when MacDonald’s is paying $20 an hour. Right now, things are more sane then they were few years ago. For the first time in five years, my Williston site is fully staffed.”
Oscar-Zero reminded me of a set for the TV show ‘Get Smart’, until I realized that there are thirty other alert facilities around the country where this exact equipment and set of procedures are still in active use. They are still operating on high alert more than fifty years after they opened, though they have never once been used. “This was the front line of the Cold War, a war that we won without firing a shot. It’s an odd way to measure success.”
Today I faced 97 miles with few services and a forecast of rain; a day demanding extra time and strategy. It stormed all night in Copper (even lost power for a few hours) but the morning emerged dry, if not sunny. The easy side of Vail pass was my first of three major climbs, and I reached the peak before eight. The misty clouds on the mountains were reminiscent of a fantasy film. Rain began to fall as I descended, and I ducked into a bus shelter for ten minutes when it turned into a torrent. Once the rain resumed a regular rhythm I kept on. The sky brightened by the time I was through the resort.
From the top of Vail Pass to the Wolcott turnoff is over thirty miles of descent, mostly gentle, mostly along Eagle Creek, which raged at its banks despite being midsummer. A nice series of bike paths kept me parallel but apart from I-70.
I turned north on C131 and pedaled eight miles up the Wolcott Divide. The descent into State Bridge is steep, and crosses the Colorado River not too far from its headwaters. The highway runs close to the river through Bond and McCoy, towns in name only, and then climbs again across the Red Dirt Divide, which makes clear how Colorado got its name.
While I waited for dryer skies I perused the local bulletin board and added my card to the mix. By the time I rolled through Phippsburg, along the serpentine Yampa, to Stagecoach State Park (Steamboat Springs’ reservoir) and up to the Glas Deffryn Ranch south of Oak Creek, the skies cleared and the afternoon was beautiful. It was just after 4 p.m. and I had done an excellent job dodging the weather.
My hosts for the night, Pam and Steve Williams, breed Scottish Highland cattle on their 200-acre ranch. Steve toured me around and introduced me to their big-horned family. Pam made an exquisite baked potato bar which we ate in their timber-frame home with the sun setting over the pastures. Then we enjoyed dessert in a fire circle under the stars, mesmerized by the giant flames. Talk about tomorrow was rooted in our good fortune today.
How Will We Live Tomorrow? 