Hamburgers and Fellowship

Following the Reception at the Officer's Club, we skipped the dinner and instead Alek and a few of his pilot trainee friends had a cookout in one of the park areas on the base, just across the street from where we had "The Bus" parked.

It was a nice get together and gave all of us an opportunity to enjoy some "Hamburgers and Fellowship" and get to know some of the new pilots and their families.

Retreat

After a guided tour of Laughlin AFB, the pilot trainees assembled, in their flight suites, for a Retreat Ceremony, when the United States Flag is lowered for the evening.

Alex's class started with 35 trainees, but only 27 finished to graduate. Of the others, one quit and 7 washed out for various reasons.

Following the Retreat Ceremony, we all gathered at the Officer's Club for a Reception and Cocktail Party to "kick-off" Graduation Week, during which the United States Air Force will accept 27 new pilots.

Congratulations and good luck to all of the graduates.

Laughlin AFB - OUCH!

We left Bottomless Lakes and the Roswell, New Mexico, area to attend the Graduation Ceremonies of Carole's grandson, Lt. Alek Krallman. Alek is in the U.S Air Force, has just completed Pilot Training at Laughlin AFB near Del Rio, Texas, and will receive his wings in Graduation Ceremonies this week.

After two days of driving, we arrived at Laughlin AFB and were met by immovable barrier posts at the West entrance to the base. The barrier posts were arranged such that an auto has to zig-zag through an obstacle course at slow speed to enter the base. The purpose, obviously, is a matter of security to prevent someone from entering the base at high speed . . . but these were designed for an automobile, not a 40' Motor Home with tow car behind.

Well, when I stopped "The Bus" for identification and inspection half way through the "obstacle course", the guard told me to pull on through the gate area and park on the right side of the road for further inspection. As I turned to the right to miss the last of the barriers, I heard a loud "crunch"! I was not yet clear of the middle barrier and scraped it on the side of "The Bus".

OUCH!

We made it to Laughlin AFB, but entry to the base sure hurt . . . another repair job when we get back home. The sad part is that those barrier posts are retractable. That is, the guard can just activate a switch in the Guard House and the barrier posts lower into the driveway flush with the surface . . . which the guard did for me AFTER I scraped the barrier. Thanks a lot, but too late!

From that nerve wracking experience, we drove to the Base Famcamp, an RV Park on the base where we have a nice location to park "The Bus" with full hookups, on a concrete pad, with a concrete patio and picnic table.

We plan to stay here for a week to attend all of the activities and ceremonies associated with the training and  graduation of an Air Force Pilot. Also, a dozen of Alek's relatives are here from the Pacific Northwest to share the experience. So it will also be sort of a mini-family reunion for a part of Carole's family.

This should be an exciting week in spite of the "OUCH".

Hail in May

Who would expect, or even believe, that we would have "Hail in May" . . .  in the desert, of all places.

But as we were returning to Roswell from visiting a neighboring town in the mountains, Ruidoso, New Mexico, we ran into a serious hailstorm in the desert. The highway was nearly covered with hailstones about one-half inch in diameter. We pulled off the road for a closer look and discovered the "Hail in May" was at least a couple inches deep here in the desert..

UFO Museum and Research Center

In 1947, a UFO reportedly crashed in the desert Northwest of Roswell, New Mexico. The Roswell Army Air Force Base was charged with investigating and cleaning up the crash site. Needless to say, the Army hushed it up, even declaring that the "Roswell Incident" was just a weather balloon.

People involved at the time were threatened with their lives if they revealed what they had seen, or even discussed the event with anyone. Some 30 years later, however, people began to talk and a group of people in Roswell seriously investigated the event . . . obtaining the stories from those involved.

They assembled all of this information, along with exhibits, and established a UFO Museum and Research Center in downtown Roswell.

My son, Greg, and I toured the museum and found it very enlightening . . . and educational. Much of the material exhibited was in the form of copies of newspaper articles, newspaper photos, statements (supported by affidavits) of individuals involved in the incident, from the rancher who discovered the crash site and gathered debris to members of the Army who walked the site gathering debris and people who saw and/or examined the bodies of the four aliens who were reportedly aboard.

One of the exhibits had recreations of some of the debris as described by people who had picked them up originally in 1947. All of the debris was described as being of unknown materials which they could neither bend nor burn.

Reportedly, four aliens were found in the craft or nearby, one of which was still alive. The bodies were taken to Albuquerque and the debris was all taken to Houston and then transferred to Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio. The museum had a model of one of the aliens in a glass case and also one on an operating table with a doctor and a secret service agent nearby.

In addition, there was an exhibit of a hovering flying saucer with four aliens walking around on the ground below.

A model of a flying saucer crashed into a hillside is supposedly a re-creation of the crash site.

Even after all these years, the Government still maintains the "Roswell Incident" was just a weather balloon. However, this UFO Museum and Research Center, with all of it's displays and documents presents a very convincing case that the "Roswell Incident" really involved a UFO, a flying saucer from outer space and that a crew of four aliens was aboard.

We may never know the real truth until our Government, in all it's wisdom, releases the debris and documentation from the 1947 "Roswell Incident".

On the lighter side, Greg did try on a pair of alien sunglasses in the Museum Gift Shop. He looks like he could be from Outer Space!

On a more serious note, if anyone ever gets to Roswell, New Mexico, I recommend the "UFO Museum and Research Center" where you can review the exhibits and make up your own mind about the "Roswell Incident". You will find it very enlightening . . . and educational.

Bottomless Lakes

The Bottomless Lakes  area about 18 miles Southeast of Roswell, New Mexico, was an underwater seabed thousands of year ago. When the inland ocean receded, underground salts and calcium were dissolved leaving large open caves. In some places, the roof was not strong enough to support the weight of the rock above. So, the roof caved in leaving sinkholes which subsequently filled with water.

In the late 1800's, cowboys driving cattle through the area tied their lariats together to see how deep the lakes were . . . but were unable to reach the bottom. So they called them "Bottomless Lakes". Today, however, we know that these lakes are 90 feet deep, pretty deep for such small lakes (or sinkholes).

This is the area where we decided to park "The Bus" for a few weeks . . . Bottomless Lakes State Park . . . an area encompassing about ten of the Bottomless Lakes . . . an area of unique geology and a quiet beauty. Each of the lakes is surrounded by red rock bluffs, the sides of the collapsed sinkhole.

The largest of the lakes within the park boundary is Lea Lake, with a large sandy beach, pavilion, picnic tables, and a bathhouse with showers, a refreshment stand (open only in the Summer), and a place to buy ice . . .

There is also a small marina where the Park Rangers dock paddle boats and pedal boats for rent in the Summer months . . .

And a very nice campground with full hookups for RVs, each space with a concrete patio and picnic table with canopy, and a level river rock filled parking space . . .

This is where we are spending three weeks, just quietly admiring the scenery and watching for UFOs here in the "UFO Capital of the World".

UFO Capital of the World

With the weather warming up and Spring replacing Winter, we decided it was time to get out of Tucson . . . before the daytime temperatures got too hot. We need to be in South Texas mid-May, so we decided to go to the high desert in New Mexico for a couple of weeks to see some new scenery and kill some time enroute.

A park near Roswell, New Mexico, really sounded interesting; Bottomless Lakes State Park. This would give us interesting scenery and unusual geology, plus we could be on the lookout for alien sightings in the Roswell area . . . the "UFO Capital of the World".

So, with adventure in the wind, we pulled up stakes in Tucson and set our sails for Roswell, New Mexico, and the Bottomless Lakes.

Tucson at Night

Throughout the winter we spent in Tucson, our good friends, Joe and Marty Chandler from Fort Wayne, Indiana, were telling us that we really needed to see "Tucson at Night" . . . driving North up to the end of Campbell Street in the foothills above Tucson. So, during our last week in Tucson, we all drove to the end of Campbell Street to see "Tucson at Night".

Sure enough, it was worth the trip. We were just high enough in the foothills North of the city to be able to look down on the city lights. It was very pretty, like flying into a city after dark . . . "Tucson at Night".

The Cold War - Revisited

The Cold War extended from the end of WW II to 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. During that time, the United States was at war . . . "The Cold War". US stratagy was called "Mutual Assured Destruction". That is, if either side initiated a nuclear strike, the other country had the capability to destroy the opponent. This strategy gave birth to the Inter-Contiental Balistic Missile . . . behomuths of metal, electronics, rocket fuel, and multiple nuclear warheads.

One of the most awesome of these behomuths in the United States assenal was the Titan II Missile which was on alert, at-the-ready, in blast-proof underground silos in 54 locations across the country. These awesome liquid fueled rockets with multiple nuclear warheads stood 103 feet tall, but were buried from view and destruction in these underground silos.

At the end of "The Cold War", a treaty between The United States and the Soviet Union required the dis-mantling of both missles and the silos in which they were protected. All such missles and installations in this country were destroyed except one, all under the watchful eye of scientists from the Soviet Union. With the Soviet Union's approval, that one Titan II Missile and one silo were preserved as a museum near Tucson, Aizona. The missile and the silo are, of course, inoperable.
My long-time friend, Joe Chandler, and I had the opportunity to tour this facility . . . truly "The Cold War - Revisited".
A large metal building in front of the underground silo serves as a Visitor's Center and Museum, where  many exhibits provide an introduction to the events of the time.

The missile silo behind the Visitor's Center is covered in concrete with massive steel blast-proof doors which were designed to roll away for firing of the missile, but today are permanantly blocked from opening more than half way . . . and the Russians monitor this site by satelitte and personal inspections.

The Titan Missile in the silo is shockingly huge. The viewing area was only about ten feet from the warhead which, of course, is a dummy approved by the Russians.

The missile itself is very tall. We only went down to the second level of the silo, where the Control Room is located, but there are eight levels in total. The lower levels were used primarily for fueling and maintenance. This is a photo looking down into the silo from the second level.

We toured the crew's quarters and walked down long blast-proof hallways passing through massive steel doors and 20-30 foot thick walls of reinforced concrete to the Control Room. Everywhere we looked, there was piping and huge electric cables.

The Control Room was awesome . . . a computer room from the 60's with so many redundancies. No crew member was ever allowed to be alone anywhere in the silo, except in the Crew's Quarters. It took at least two crew members to do anything, especially a launch.

The Tour Guide led us through a simulated launch of the Titan Missile, which could be launched within 58 seconds of a Launch Command and be delivered to a target up to 5,500 miles away in less than 30 minutes. Our tour was extremely educational and really, almost kind of chilling to see the world of the 50's and 60's . . . and what could have been.

It really was "The Cold War - Revisited".

Thunder and Lightning

The Davis-Monthan AFB at Tucson put on an Air Show over the weekend, which they called "Thunder and Lightning Over Arizona". A couple of guys here in the RV Park and I decided to take it in. The wives had no interest.

Rather than getting into the 100,000+ people crowd on the air base, we decided to set up chairs just outside the base on the back side, about 150 yards from the control tower. We had pretty good seats, but the telephoto setting on my camera didn't do the action justice.

The show included flyovers of the C-17 Globmaster transport, the heavy-duty long-range B-1B Lancer bomber, and the stealth flying-wing design B-2 Spirit bomber. Demonstrations of the A-10 Thunderbolt (nicknamed the Warthog), which are stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB, included simulated strafing and bombing passes.

At one point in the show, an A-10 flew in formation with the much smaller WW II F-51 Mustang. That brought back a lot of memories because when I was in the U.S. Air Force, my unit flew F-51 Mustangs.

 The C-130 cargo plane, which is also stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB, demonstrated airborne refueling of two helicopters.

The T-33A Shooting Star put on quite a show, including some nice acrobatics.

An MV-22B Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter, then rotates the propellers forward to fly like an airplane demonstrated it's capability.

There were many stunt flying and aerobatics demonstrations . . .

Including a wing walker . . .

and a number of sky diving demonstrations . . .

But the highlight of the show was precision flying by the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. They put on quite a show . . .

They flew six F-16C Fighting Falcon's with four of them demonstrating precision formation flying while two of them were performing low-level near-miss passes over the runway and manuvers with one flying right-side up and one flying upside down. They finished with all six flying in close formation and performing a starburst manuver. It was quite a sight!

I'm sorry my camera didn't record these arial demonstrations better . . . but, then, as they say, "you should have been there" for the "Thunder and Lightning Over Arizona".