Time To Get The Hell Out Of Dodge!
Come tomorrow I will be counting down the minutes until I can make like this B-52 and jet on out of here! I've got a five day weekend and some R&R lined up and it's making the clocks move twice as slow as normal but the wait is nearly over. We're going to go kick around Red River Gorge for a few days, get away from people and LMPD!
I grew up just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Gorge but we always avoided it like the plague (covid?) because of all the Buckeye and Hoosier tourists it drew. Damn flatlanders were always getting drunk and walking off a cliff or getting scared of the roads and refusing to drive more than 30 mph on roads we'd run 65 on. Up until a little after CCCP (USSR) crumbled the air force would practice low level bombing with B-52s like the one in the photo in the area. Eight jet engines at treetop level and reverberating off the surrounding hills will give you some different notions on what loud entails.
It has always amazed me how well known the Gorge is, even when I was thousands of miles away I'd still run into people who were familiar with it or had been there. One person I met described it as 'Arches National Park but with trees' and after wandering Arches a bit (the photo above is from there) I couldn't argue with that. Arches NP was actually a bit underwhelming, you couldn't even climb on the arches! (Natural Bridge State Park is adjacent to the Gorge, there you can hike across the Natural Bridge, a 78 ft long, 65 ft high natural sandstone arch)
We're going to be staying in a yurt while we're at the Gorge so that should be interesting. I'm still slightly dubious, my understanding of yurts didn't involve them being permanent structures. I don't know if there will be butterflies there while we are but I'm sure there will be bears... I wouldn't mind getting some photos of bears but I'd rather not have them getting into my lodging.
I have no clue if we'll have signal or internet while we're there, if y'all don't hear from me for a bit you know where I'm at!
I've worked several bases. The X-33 project at Edwards AFB was the most exciting. They'd fly the stealth bomber over regularly and you couldn't hear the thing until it was way passed you.
That and target practice the fighter jets would engage in on the mountain side. These cameras didn't have phones back then er... uh, phone you know what I'm tryna say. Picture things.
Yurt, had to look that one up. Guess there's no other name for the things. Yurt it is!
I remember reading about the X-33 in Popular Mechanics or something similar, that's badass. Stealth bomber, are you talking about the old F-117s? Or the B-2 flying wings? I've never seen either airborne but I did get to look at the F-117 up close. Wright-Patterson AFB was my favorite part of Ohio when I was a kid (come to think of it, it probably still is), we always had to stop and look at the aircraft when we were in the area. When they got a F-117 for display I was pretty sure it couldn't get any better than that.
Probably a good thing the cameras didn't have phones then, those dudes with the letters M & P on their shoulder flashes can get downright excited...
I'd read about yurts when I was getting into the history of the steppes and Central Asia but never really expected to find one in the Daniel Boone National Forest...
I built that. The day we left it was fully functional and ready for flight. The next morning LA times front page how X-33 was a failure. All of us who built it read the paper like "wtf?!" Nah.. not true, I was there.
The fellas on the job were calling it a stealth bomber if I remember correctly, that's where I got that term from. Otherwise I wouldn't know. It was big and black, you could watch it approach, fly over your head and in the distance for awhile before it made sound.
MP's. I've worked at George, Edwards, Vandenberg, Pendleton... Bro somewhere between 5-10 military bases in my career, they each have specific background questionnaire check things along with basic FBI and criminal backgrounds. But that Edwards one was the most intense, I'm not making this up:
Yeah.. He said that.
Ha, sounds about right. You ever get to see the SR-71?
I had to search it just now to see what it was and yes, I have. There's one right against the 215 freeway at March AFB. I've never worked there but all around the area so I drove by it many'0 time. That's it though, it's a display plane along the fence with probably 10 other display type planes from military looking to techy looking for daily commuters to look at.
That Edwards was no joke about the desert tortoise too. All projects in the desert have to be environmentally friendly toward specific species like a kit Fox, tarantula, and tortoises. Lots of planning goes to rehome them etc etc etc. But if your project killed a tortoise out there and you didn't report it, it was prison time. I don't remember how long probably like a year or something but still. They were pretty serious about turtles.
Great B-52 image. I've been up in the cockpit of one of those...Dials and knobs everywhere.
Enjoy your gorge-yurting bro.
Thanks! I've got to look into the cockpit of one but it was a glassed in static display. Did you know that back during the the Vietnam War they still had a tail gunner with. 50 cals and managed to shoot down a couple MIGs?
I shall try! If nothing else it'll be nice to get some social distance from the city.
I didn't know they had tail-gunners in the VNW still...Probably not the role I'd like to have but still, would be cool taking down MIG's by hand like that.
They went away with the Soviet Union. This article goes into a bit more detail. I didn't realize until I read it that I've seen the one that got the last confirmed kill, it's on display at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The gunner was the only enlisted man on the aircraft, wonder how long they drank for free after they got to put that red star on their aircraft?
Great article...Yep, I reckon that tail-gunner didn't pay for drinks that night.