Memories.
I got to thinking the other day, when I spent that week boondocking in Congress, Arizona, those Air Force F-35 jets, which I took a few blurry pictures of, that were flying almost every day, all day, and almost every night, and I had never seen anything like that before. It made me wonder if those jets and their pilots were practicing for the upcoming Iran attack. It makes sense, because all the time I've spent at Congress, and the bombing range near Ajo, Arizona, I had never seen that much activity going on.
I saw almost constant activity like that going on when I was in the Air Force, but I only saw that happen one other time as a civilian, and that was when my dad was stationed at Homestead Air Force Base in Miami, Florida, in 1962. My family had only been in Miami for a few months when the Cuban Missile Crisis kicked off. I was 15 or 16 years old, going to South Dade High School, only about 3 miles away from the base, and I was plenty old and wise enough to realize what living on ground zero of a possible Russian nuclear attack was going to be like.
Homestead Air Force Base was a SAC [ Strategic Air Command ] base at the time and had a full complement of B- 58 Hustler bombers, which were built for the sole purpose of dropping nuclear bombs on Russia. The base's runway was built extra long for the heavily laden B-58s to be able to take off with a full load. There was also a bunch of F104 Starfighters, which I believe were the fastest airplanes in the Air Force at the time..... Little-known fact about Homestead Air Force Base..... Because Homestead Air Force Base had such a long runway, it was the designated landing strip for NASA's space shuttle in case of an emergency.
This post is getting a bit long, so I may or may not finish it tomorrow, depending on my ambition or lack thereof.
Theboondork
One of the dry washes I enjoy walking on.
Anytime you see a group of people boondocking this close together, it usually means they are in a club of some kind, friends, or enjoy the same hobby. In this case, they've all got off-road vehicles that they putt around on.
Desert sunset.