BY ROBERTA COCKING

It’s not too late to sign up for the 8th grade spring break trip to Washington, DC. In fact, the trip would be a great idea for a perfect Christmas present for your 8th grade student! There are currently 11 airline seats/ trip spaces left for the trip. Deadline for the trip at the current price is January 10, 2025. After that date, it will still be possible to sign up, however, there might be an increase to the trip price due to late charges, increased airline or hotel prices.

Flexible payment plans and fundraising tools are available.  The trip is a private trip and not a school sponsored trip and has been offered to Los Alamos Middle School students for over 35 years.

The trip will include round trip air transportation, sightseeing, transportation in and around Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland, all meals and admissions, hotel accommodations, night chaperones in hotel, accident and health insurance. An on-call doctor is available for student illness or emergencies. Highlights of the trip include the White House, the International Spy Museum, a Capitol tour, the Pentagon Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Holocaust Museum, the Smithsonian museums, the National Zoo, Arlington National Cemetery, night tours of the Presidential Monuments, the Iwo Jima, Korean, and the Vietnam Memorials, the National Aquarium in Baltimore and much more. Four students will be selected to lay the morning wreath at Arlington National Cemetery Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The trip will be four days and three nights in duration. The group will stay in a five star hotel in Arlington or Crystal City, minutes from the DC sites.

Here are a few comments from parents and students regarding previous trips:

“I am so grateful for Roberta and the staff at Worldstrides! They organized an unforgettable trip in DC and Baltimore for the Los Alamos students and myself. Their knowledge of the city, museums, transportation, etc.  allowed them to stay flexible in bad weather, make alternative schedules when things were closed and they kept the kids busy each and every moment of every day. I lived in DC for several years and I never saw the city in the way I did with Roberta!”  -April Wade

“The DC trip was so much fun and educational. It was amazing how many things we got to see in the time we were there! The city is beautiful and has so much history for our kids to learn from. From a parent’s perspective, it was fun to watch from a distance as my child interacted with other kids on the trip. It was fun to have them learn some safe independence and spread their wings a bit. This trip will not be forgotten. The education and memories will last a lifetime. Truly a fabulous experience!”- Christi Haynes.

“ This trip was the best of my life! I learned that I have a lot of friends in my school that I didn’t even know that I had.”

“I learned a lot on my trip to DC. It was amazing, educational and FUN! I learned a lot about the memorials, Presidents and wars! If I could go on this trip again, I would in a second!”

“I now have so much more respect for our country than I did before! Seeing all the people who died for our freedom was special to me. Without them, we wouldn’t have the life that I know. I gained a lot of knowledge. I never really knew about the wars and events until we saw them on this trip. I had never thought much about wars that my grandparents had served in until this trip. I especially loved laying the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was special to me because my grandparents served our country.”

“This trip changed me in so many ways. I learned so much about our government, not only from books but now in person. I became really good friends with people who went on this trip. I also learned a valuable lesson on how to handle my money.”

“This trip has changed me because of the Holocaust Museum. This museum made me realize what freedom really is and how much we should value our life. It made me realize how horrible it was and why we should never let it happen again.”

“I love history! This trip made me love it even more! I have been to Washington, DC many times. This was my favorite time! I have learned more history on this trip than in school. I also made tons of new friends. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

“This trip has done many things for me. I have become closer to my classmates. I have become more responsible because of this trip. Being away from home made me  be more responsible. I had to wake up on time, manage my money and always be back to the bus on time. I feel more like a young adult now!” 

“This trip has changed me as a person in many ways. It has opened my eyes to many things that I otherwise would not have realized, understood or even cared about. I now understand the things people gave up so that this nation and all the people in it can live in freedom. This trip showed me how reading from a textbook and looking at pictures can only do so much for you. Many people died fighting for our country and are remembered and thanked for it in this city. I would have never known, understood or cared about this!”

“Because of this trip, I have finally learned to like myself!”

Sign up at https://worldstrdes.com/custom/2025-los-alamos-middle-school-dc-215374/ using Trip ID # 215374 call 1-800-468-5899. Questions? Call Roberta Cocking at 505-670-0679 or email her at scrc318@cox.net or robertac@worldstrides.com

Related

The dynamics of nuclear tensions have changed since the Cold War, and Wyoming might not take a direct hit if the bombs fly. But it’s still best to keep putting the fear of God into the world’s despots, a retired top-tier military official said. 

A FEMA map showing the places in the United States that would supposedly be the safest during a nuclear war leaves Wyoming pretty clear, but doesn’t tell the full story about how safe the Cowboy State would be in a nuclear war.

And while most of Wyoming is seemingly marked safe from being vaporized by hellfire, Cheyenne and the surrounding areas are pegged to be hammered into oblivion by multiple strikes. 

Stay Strong

That might have been true decades ago, but things might go differently today. Wyoming might not get nuked at all, retired Air Force Col. Tucker Fagan told Cowboy State Daily. 

That doesn’t mean it would be easy here in the aftermath of nuclear war, he said. It’s likely much of the country’s vital infrastructure and supply chains would be destroyed. 

So, just as during the Cold War with the now-defunct Soviet Union, it’s best to keep letting the world’s despots know that they’d have nothing to gain and everything to lose by going nuclear, Fagan said. 

“As long as we are strong and we can deter, and Russians and Chinese and North Koreans are afraid to die, that’s the essence of deterrence,” he said. 

Fagan is the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Nuclear Section under President Ronald Reagan and the former Commander of  F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne.

When it comes to the scenarios of nuclear war, Fagan is an expert. Along with his top-level military experience, he created the “nuclear football” for President Ronald Reagan.

Putin Would Probably Go After People, Not Silos 

Fagan said he’s seen the map that supposedly shows the safest places in case of nuclear war, and others like it. 

The problem is, they rely on the Old Cold War philosophy. Arms stockpiles peaked in the 1970s and ’80s, when each of the sides had more than enough weapons, more than 10,000 each, to lay waste to each other many times over. 

Had a nuclear war erupted in those days, missile silos would have been a prime target. And Cheyenne, along with much of southeastern Wyoming has plenty of those. 

Treaties have since cut the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, down to about 1,500 warheads each, Fagan said. 

But as Russian President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated in his country’s war against Ukraine,Fagan said, the primary target would probably be America’s people. 

“What’s the Russian objective, what are they doing in Ukraine? Killing people,” he said. “They’re after the people, because they know the people will not be subjugated.” 

Americans would similarly refuse to be subjugated, so Putin would try to kill as many as possible, Fagan said. 

And to do that, he might not want to waste warheads on a sparsely populated places like Wyoming, he said. 

Scare The Dictators Themselves

Despots like Putin don’t care about the lives of ordinary citizens, even those in their own countries, Fagan said. 

That’s why it’s important for the U.S. to make sure the dictators themselves know they wouldn’t survive going nuclear. 

“You need to let them know you have the ability to kill even them. They don’t want to die. Do you think those autocrats care about their people?” he said. “I’m talking about Putin, Xi Jinping (China) and Kim Jong Un (North Korea), they don’t want to die.”

If any of the despots launched, and Wyoming didn’t get hit directly, it would still be miserable here, Fagan added. 

“We would still lose electricity, and supply chains would disappear,” he said. 

States Would Have To Band Together

There is a glimmer of hope in the case of major national disaster, nuclear war or otherwise, Wyoming All Hazards Association President LaRae Dobbs told Cowboy State Daily. 

Each Wyoming county has an emergency plan, which dovetails in with state and regional plans, she said. 

And those plans include what to do in case of a huge breakdown at the national level. 

“It’s more focused on what are the cascading events that are being caused, rather than what was the event that caused it,” she said. 

The first order of business would be making sure supplies of food, water and medicine kept flowing, as much as possible, she said. 

Toward that end, Wyoming and surrounding states have strategic stockpiles, of such things, she said. 

“We would immediately rely on the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security to coordinate with other surrounding states,” Dobbs said. “We have mutual aid agreements with the other states.”

Emergency coordinators at the county level are the key to making it all work, she added. 

“We know each other by name and by sight, but the majority of our communities don’t even know we exist,” Dobbs said.

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.

SAN FRANCISCO – The San Francisco Fire Department rescued two dogs from an apartment fire that occurred Saturday afternoon, believed to have been started from a charging battery. 

The fire occurred around 3 p.m. on Minna and Sixth Streets. Fire officials said a fire sprinker that went off in the unit helped slow down the fire’s progress of spreading. 

No injuries were reported, and the two dogs were safely rescued. 

SEE ALSO: 3 hurt after fire breaks out above Brookdale post office