Full disclosure – I’m attempting to write a short article on this subject that I someday hope to publish (no doubt to minimal amounts of online fanfare).
I’m looking for 12 or 15 unusual destinations that would be particularly appealing to stereotypical nerds like me. The first example I thought of was “the self-proclaimed future birthplace of fictional character Captain James T. Kirk,” Riverside, Iowa. Any input?
I give you Condon, Oregon. Two kids out that town, Linus Pauling and William Parry Murphy, earned a total of 3 Nobel Prizes. That’s gotta be a record for Nobels per capita.
Don’t just visit. Move there, have some kids, raise some nerds.
How about Legoland amusement park in California?
We had a thread last month on where to go for a geek vacation.
Metropolis, Illinois. There’s a Superman museum, an annual Superman celebration, and a local newspaper called the “Metropolis Planet”.
Isn’t there a town in Idaho that claims to be the future birth place of James Kirk? Also, Area 51.
Iowa. It’s in the OP.
Hunstville, AL has some sort of space/rocketry museum, I think.
Roswell, NM has UFO stuff.
Albuquerque NM - Museum of Nuclear Science
I hear you can get a field trip to the Trinity site where they tested the first A-Bomb.
Vulcan, Alberta. Unashamedly cashing in on the coincidence of names.
Silicon Valley, in general? You can drive around and at least look at the corporate headquarters of Google, Ebay, Netflix, Apple, HP, Electronic Arts, etc. Then you can go to Fry’s Electronics.
Somewhere around here must be the fabled garage where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple. (They both attended my high school, btw.)
I recently travelled to Wuppertal, Germany, for pure nerd value.
The Computer History Museumin Mountain View, California. Babbage machines, a chunk of the original Eniac a primitive hard drive that was about 36" across and lots of other stuff.
I was utterly fascinated by the displays. My wife was utterly fascinated by my utter fascination.
I was going to say, wherever a planetary transit of the sun is visible.
But I guess that’s not what you want.
Fine, JRRT’s grave.
Only two weekends a year, it’s closed the rest of the time. First Saturday in April, first Saturday in October. Also, it’s on the northern part of White Sands Missile Range, something of a drive from Albuquerque.
EBR-1 (Experimental Breeder Reactor 1), near Arco, Idaho. They do tours and everything.
The CERN particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland.
What’s a stereotypical nerd? Computer/tech nerd, D&D nerd, just a socially awkward nerd?
I’d recommend Ghent, Belgium, and go see the castle. But I’m an omni-nerd.
Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. Home of Funspot, the largest arcade in the world, which itself houses The American Classic Arcade Museum, a huge rotating collection of hundreds of pre-1985 arcade video and pinball games.
I went a couple of years ago, and am patiently awaiting the day I can return. Fun, fun place.
Not sure if this is nerdy or geeky, but Astoria, Oregon is a popular place for Goonies fans to visit.