My significant other and I are planning a road trip later this year. We're hoping for a good mix of science and the outdoors. I was pleased to see the recent publication, The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive. Hopefully more of this kind of information will be aggregated and shared. America has played an important roll in the world of modern science, and our citizens and guests should know about the great museums, laboratories, renewable energy facilities, and other exciting places we have to visit.
In this spirit, I'd like to share a great road trip idea for those in the Pacific Northwest. I recommend a summertime drive about 2 hours east of Seattle through the Cascade Mountains to Ellensburg, WA for the Table Mountain Star Party - an annual event about 20 minutes NW of Ellensburg. The event is pretty low-key, but a lot of fun. You get to camp, listen to astronomy lectures, see some great telescopes, meet interesting people, and the best part, you get to wander around under an extraordinary night sky and listen as some very knowledgeable amateur (and some professional) astronomers talk about space. Most of the action is at night, so daytime is perfect for a quick drive over to Puget Sound Energy's Wild Horse Wind Facility. The wind farm has a nice visitor's center, and if you time it right you can catch a tour that will take you inside the base of a turbine and through a small solar facility. The views, like those from Table Mountain, are absolutely beautiful. The trip back to Seattle will take you past Cle Elum, a small town where one of the world's largest solar photovoltaic power plants is being constructed. Not much to see yet, but give it a few years and it should definitely be worth a visit.
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