Day Forty One

The plan today was to drive from Boise, ID to Springdale, UT via Pocatello, ID. Our intended thing for Pocatello fell through, so we had to make an on-the-fly adjustment to the plan. It made no sense to get to Springdale early. Ginny opened her library of travel books and went to town. There were many options for stuff to do, but the one that stood out as potentially interesting was the Ogden Union Station Museum in Ogden, UT, of course. So we laid in a new course for the starship and headed that way. We instructed Mr. Sulu to maintain warp 1.10 during the voyage. Fortunately, traffic was light enough to allow that.

The museum turned out to be pretty cool. It was actually four: Utah State Railroad, John M. Browning Firearms, Browning-Kimball Classic Cars and Utah State Cowboy & Western Heritage. All were interesting. We had been to Promontory, Utah where the golden spike was driven on May 10, 1869. The railroad display was about the history after that occasion. They did have the original safe that the golden spike was kept in at Stanford University. That is today's photo. The spike is still at Stanford.

Another part of the museum was about John Moses Browning, probably the most prolific gun designer in history. Although he did manufacture some of his own guns, he sold designs to a number of manufacturers and the designs became iconic. The ones that come to mind for me are the M1911 Colt .45 which was the official sidearm for the US military from 1911 to 1986. I have one of these. He also designed the Winchester model 1894 lever action rifle. I have one of these as well. One of his most long lasting inventions was the M2 (Ma Deuce) .50 caliber machine gun which was introduced in the '30s and is still the .50 caliber weapon of choice. It was one of the designs that Browning manufactured himself. It also armed virtually all of the US fighters and bombers of World War II.

So the museum was a nice diversion and fit perfectly into the day's plan. Good job, Ginny.