Los Alamos, NM
Hanford, Washington
Fernald, Ohio (now a nature preserve with onsite contaminated water recycling)

http://fredflare.com/customer/product.php?productid=2859&cat=316

http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org/

As a bonus, it’s across the street from an INCREDIBLE Himalayan/Nepalese/Indian restaurant (that’s cheap and well stocked with beers of many countries).

http://www.usmenuguide.com/himalayancuisine.html

After museum and food, you can top it off with a coffee from Sexxpresso next door, “Las Vegas’ hottest coffee”. Coffee served by baristas in lingerie (I know – ouch”). I haven’t actually had coffee there, but the little Airstream trailer re-covered to look like a giant coffee cup is awfully cute.

http://sexxyespresso.com/

There’s also a ton of stuff like where all the old Vegas neon goes to die:
http://www.neonmuseum.org/boneyard.html

A lot of the old neon is also down on Freemont Street (downtown Las Vegas, which is NOT the Strip)
http://www.vegasexperience.com/

And Hoover Dam really is cool.

~Ann

For many of the places on your list, you may very well get your fill within an hour or two after you’ve reached them. But I’ll second or third the tip that Yellowstone cries out for more than a day.

Old Faithful may be obligatory, but try Norris Geyser Basin as a followup. Mammoth is pretty surreal, Grand Canyon (of the Yellowstone) Village has some retro charm as a place to stay, and the canyon view from the Lower Falls was more dynamic and more — digestible? — for me than that other Grand Canyon. Speaking of digestion, breakfast would be a good excuse to drop by the Lake Yellowstone Hotel dining room.

On the way in or out of Yellowstone, it’s definitely worth stopping (and looking up) if you can pass through Jackson Hole, an hour to two from the south entrance of Yellowstone. Closer to Mount Rushmore — not even an hour away — is Crazy Horse. As perennial national tourist traps go, it sort of hovers on that fine line of “so bad it’s good” status.

The San Fran picks on your list are sensible, and perhaps you’ll stumble across some Starfleet wannabe with her own opinions, but I’d remind you to 1) try the sourdough, 2) drop some coin at the Musee Mecanique, 3) ride a cable car, 4) meander down Lombard Street between Hyde and Leavenworth, and 5) try to find a few hours to wander about the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts.

On a high school trip once, I fell asleep on the bus and woke up when the bus was stopped at South of the Border. It was dark and all the neon was blinking, and there was…like, a plastic cow thing advertising some form of beef, I think? I just remember that I opened my eyes and looked out the window, and my first thought was genuinely “Ohhhhh man, the bus crashed, and we’re in hell.”