Geek Destinations

I've collected a list of destinations that geeks like me have visited or want to visit. I welcome additions to this collection.

Museums

The Titan missile silo museum

in Tucson.

The National Cryptologic Museum

, north of Washington DC.

The CIA museum in Langley

. You need to get into the building, but the collection is unclassified.

Tesla's lab on Long Island

. (Abandoned and in disrepair, but still...)

The Exploratorium

in San Francisco, probably the best hands-on science museum in the US.

The Ontario Science Centre

, possibly the best hands-on science museum in the world, though it has been a while since I have checked it out.

The Paris Sewer Museum

The American Museum of Natural History

in New York City, particularly the rock collection. Bring a geiger counter to it, or any geological museum.

The Science Fiction Museum

in Seattle. Small, but worth the visit.

The New England Wireless and Steam Museum

The Deutsches Museum

in Munchen. Helps if you read German for some of it.

Telephone Pioneer Museum

, Albuquerque, NM

Mansfield Memorial Museum

in Mansfield, Ohio, allegedly home to Elektro, the oldest US robot.

Tours

Midnight tour of the Fedex hub

in Memphis.

Armstrong's tower

in Alpine, NJ.

VIP tour of an Ohio-class nulear submarine

, including radar and reactor areas, either in Bangor WA or Kings Bay, GA. Clearance is probably needed.

Tour of the Nautilus

, the first nuclear powered submarine at the National Submarine Museum in New London, CT.

Tour of a World War II sub

. Some possibilities: USS Torsk in Baltimore Harbor; German U-505 at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry; USS Pampanito (SS-383) at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, (with the only working analog torpedo data computer in existence); USS Ling ath the New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack, NJ.

Bletchly Park.

The Harry Ransom Center

(U of T at Austin): the maps and science history sections alone are worth the trip.

Corning Museum of Glass

in Corning, NY, with 2 days furnace glassblowing in their hotshop.

Franklin mines

in Franklin, NJ. Where most of the world's florescent rock samples come from.

CERN

Fermilab

SLAC

Brookhaven

, and any deep-in-the-ground obsrvatory for things like neutrinos, decaying protons or dark matter.

Monticello

VIP tour of Boeing assembly

VIP tour of any Disney park

VIP tour, and ride, at the Goodyear blimp hanger

in Akron.

Edison National Historic Site.

A Titan base

The Lightning Field

in western New Mexico.

A semiconductor wafer/lab facillity

A paper mill

and a

lumber mill

A refinery

An electricity dispatching facility

The core of a nuclear reactor

, before it is fueled, of course.

An out-of-date

foundry.

The Nevada Nuclear Test Site

tour.

A working steel mill

. Get the tour given to industrial and civil engineering students.

Steam trains or boats

. Drive a steam locomotive in Portola, CA. Many have shop tours.

The Commermorative Air Force

(was the Confederate Air Force.) Get a ride on a B17, or get type rated on the only flying B29.

The Computer History Museum

Insider's tour of Los Alamos

. Requires high clearance and need to know.

Take the one week class on nuclear weapons at Sandia

. Clearance and need to know.

The Mutter Museum in Philly

. Medical oddities, and often disturbing.

The Folsom Power House Meusem

, the hydro plant which powered the electric chair at Folsom prison along witht he rest of the area, frozen in time about 1910.

The Hoover dam tour

. Various versions have been available. VIPS or those with a time machine can get the hard hat tour.

The Mercer Museum of preindustrial tools

in Doylestown, PA.

The Hegley Museum

in Delaware. See where the Duponts got their gunpowder millions, and marvel at the safety measures.

Behind the scenes tour of a zoo.

Wind tunnel at Moffet Field.

VIP tour of any munitions test facility.

A major air traffic control center.

Bridges

Climb to the top

of the towers of any large suspension bridge where the towers are over 200 feet above the water.

John A. Roebling (http://www.cincinnati-transit.net/suspension.html) suspension bridge

between Cincinatti and Covington, KY. This was practice for

The Brooklyn bridge.

The WWV transmitter

site in Ft. Collins, with atomic clock.

Geology

Any active volcano.

The Big Island in Hawaii for a low-silica volcanic eruption. Almost no geeks are crazy enough to visit an erupting high-silica volcano. Some active (not erupting) volcanos include Mount St. Helens and White Island (off the north island of New Zealand).

Volcanic areas

such as Rotorua (New Zealand) and Yellowstone National Park.

A gyser

. There are only a handful of gysers in the world. Gyser in Iceland erupts every five minutes, and gave the eruptions their name. Yellowstone is another. There's one on the north island of New Zealand.

The rift valley

in iceland where the North American and European plates are splitting.

Astronomy

Anywhere with clear skies and a total solar eclipse

. Partial or annular eclipses don't count.

The Keck Telescopes

on the Big Island, or any large observatory.

Green Bank Telescope (GBT)

, the world's largest fully sterrable single aperture antenna.

The Very Large Array (VLA)

PARI

the Holmdel horn

, and

Arecibo

Space Flight

Low earth orbit,

if you can afford it, otherwise the

Vomit Comet

, if you can take it, otherwise a good ride at an amusement park that offers

maximum time in free fall

(about seven secords).

Cape Canaveral

at Mission Control (three miles) or in the

VIP viewing area

(same place, but fenced in) or at the

viewing center

(five miles, requires tickets) or in

Titusville

(11 miles away, and still very much worth it) for any launch at all.

Night launches at Canaveral.

VIP tour of the space shuttle.

VIP tour of NASA Houston.

See the toilet with the video camera in it, and please please aim!

Faster than Mach I

in an aircraft.

A couple of hours in any jet simulator.

High powered rocketry launches

. LDRS in the Nevada desert.

Places, with a GPS

Greenwich Observatory

near London. See H1 through H5. Bring and understand your GPS readings.

Geocaches

Geographic convergence points

, though a bit dated. Where integer longitude and latitude lines intersect.

The north or south pole

, or as close as you can get to each.

The Equator

. The

International Date Line

. On the

tropics of cancer and capricorn

Get waypoints for each.

Get above the Arctic circle

and see the sun never set.

The Gallapagos.

Review Darwin first, and bring a biologist.

SCUBA dive on a reef.

At night. Bring a marine biologist.

Alamagordo.

Antarctica.

Stores

The Black Hole Surplus Store (http://blackholdsurplus.com/)

in Los Alamos.

Weird Stuff

in the Bay Area.

Powell's bookstore

in Portland, OR.

Fry's

Other places

A week on the set of Myth Busters.

Burning Man.

US Supreme Court

. Oral arguments on a geek case.

International-class fireworks displays.

Summer competition in Vancouver works. See the 36 inch mortars at work in Japan. In Moscow, they use 155mm canon, making very high displays.

Any chance to drive a Tesla or other neat vehicle.

For many geeks, the Prius qualifies.

Chernobyl

Bikini Atoll

Pinball Hall of Fame

, Vas Vegas

Thanks

Thanks to Matt Blaze, Rich Costine, Scott Daniels, Dave Kormann, Bob Cousins, Marcus Ranum, Robert Oliver, Lorette Cheswick, Brian Clapper, and Steve Bellovin.