Washington Odyssey: Pasco and Richland

After a month away from the keyboard, accumulating more adventures to document, it's time to continue the Washington odyssey.

We departed early the next morning from Bellingham's airport, but not back to Columbus; rather, we were journeying, via Seattle, to the Tri-Cities (Pasco/Richland/Kennewick) in southeastern Washington. Located smack in the middle of the rain shadow east of the Cascade Mountains, the Tri-Cities receive 7 to 8 inches of rain per year, and the climate is classified as a shrub steppe -- think sagebrush. The Google Map below shows many green areas, which are almost all irrigated. The exceptions would be the banks and islands of the Columbia River.

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Why the Tri-Cities? Joan's best friend since high school, Lyn Neely, and her daughter Elisabeth live there, and being in the neighborhood (Bellingham is much closer than Columbus!), we planned to get together. In fact, Lyn and Elisabeth's first proposed itinerary would have required at least four weeks to follow. To fit our schedule it was pared down to two.

This area is perhaps best known for the nuclear activities at the Hanford Site, including the reactor that created the material for the first plutonium-based atomic bombs. Now the primary work at Hanford is cleaning up decades of radioactive waste through vitrification, or blending of the waste with glass-like materials. The influence of the World War II and Cold War eras lingers here; for example, the local high school team is known as the Richland Bombers, whose logo is a mushroom cloud. We also had fantastic pizzas at the Atomic Ale Brewpub, although I skipped the Halflife Hefeweizen and Plutonium Porter.

The next  morning the four of us took a walk on the trail along the Columbia River. The river was high, due to the winter's snowpack being twice the normal amount. Here you can see a submerged section of the trail, in front of the benches.

Later that day we visited LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravity-Wave Observatory, during a scheduled open house. The purpose of this observatory is to observe gravitation waves, predicted by Einstein but never yet seen. Because the waves are expected to be extremely weak, this is no simple task. In short, the experiment bounces laser beams back and forth repeatedly down each of two four-kilometer arms that are at right angles to each other. A passing gravity wave will create a discrepancy between the two arms -- of about one-thousandth the diameter of a proton! That's small. In this photo, one arm stretches towards the vitrification plant being built in the distance (click on the photo to enlarge, and then squint).

Here is the main building, and the beginnings of both arms.

Extreme measures are taken to reduce noise and vibration that would interfere with the sensitive measurements of LIGO. The air conditioning units, for example, are mounted on springs on a separate, external concrete pad. When observations are underway, airplanes are requested to not fly over the site. (Observations were not going on at the time of our visit, or for a while to come, because the LIGO is undergoing advanced upgrades that will increase its sensitivity by a factor of 1,000 in 2014/2015.) Ultimately, an instrument this sensitive cannot be isolated from all noise. Predictable effects, such as the tides, can be compensated for. The final test for any potential gravitational wave event is whether the same event was seen at the twin LIGO facility in Louisiana.

In the next photo, a motorcycle belonging to one of the lead scientists is parked near the main building, in a surplus section of the protective shell for the LIGO arms.

Before setting out on our tour, we also accompanied Lyn and Elisabeth to a choir practice at their church, and to the Sunday service. We also visited the Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology, a museum with local roots that was hosting a traveling exhibit on early explorers and mapmakers of the Columbia River Valley.

The day after our visit to LIGO, we walked to the top of Badger Mountain. This local prominence was saved from the development lapping at its feet by the Friends of Badger Mountain. During the Ice Age floods and the repeated temporary formation of Lake Lewis, Badger Mountain and similar peaks would have been islands. Ice-rafted erratic glacial boulders were carried onto the flanks of Badger.

From the top I created a panorama of about 180°. I was sloppy, so some of the foreground does not line up, but you can see the Tri-Cities and the Columbia River laid out upon the flat plain (click on the photo to enlarge).

Soon it was time to pick up a rental car at the airport and start our foursome's loop through Washington state. The first stage was a two-day journey to Mazama, in the North Cascades. That will be the subject of the next post.