Fermilab Bike Ride – Neutrinos and Bubble Chambers

The Fox Valley marathon took over the Fox River bike trail this weekend. It was technically open for bike riders, but the staff working the race were politely asking us to bike somewhere else.

That was ok, we headed down the road to the Enrico Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The grounds of this scientific research center are a beautiful prairie carpeted with bright yellow Goldenrod prairie grasses criss-crossed with a nice bike trail.

We started at the parking lot near the entrance gate off of Kirk Road. We traveled on the bike trail along Pine Street, following the path East along Batavia Road to the Fermilab Village. We turned around at the marshes in the nature area and headed back but through the village toward the Buffalo farm, which wound us over to the Neutrino area. We then peddeled back to the main building, Wilson Hall. From there, we checked out the grounds of the Lederman Science Center and then left for the day.

Along the way, we saw some noteworthy places: Feynman Computing Center, the Lake Law and A. E. Sea lakes in the Nature Area, the Fermilab Village, the Buffalo Farm, Neutrino Area, the iconic Bubble Chamber, the Master Substation Capacitor Tree, Wilson Hall, Lederman Science Center, and Prairie Schooner-style covered wagon.

I visited Fermilab when I was a student in high school, and this was the first time I went through the effort to lookup some of the building and landmarks on the Fermilab site. The lab is famous for its research with its latest experiment centered around sending neutrios to upper Minnesota. (Hmm… I need to learn more about this!)