Our travels to and stay near Area 51

This morning we woke up to this!!!!

Winds and dust blowing a crossed the parking lot

Ian pondering "should we stay or should we go?"

We thought about hanging around until it passed but instead just took our time packing up and then decided to head out on the road for as long as we could and if it got too bad we could always pull over.

After a short while mother nature decided to add snow into the mixture

but we kept plugging along and eventually the sun came out. From the highway we saw a billboard for McDonalds in Ely so we surprised the girls with lunch there and some time on the playplace (as well as wifi time for mom and dad...I'm lovin it!)

From here we passed through Ward Mt Elevation 7316,

and headed onward through some beautiful scenery. A little taste of what's to come with all the canyons we will visit.

Aayla learning to draw circles on our drive...since they aren't on paper to
keep forever at least I have a picture :)

Sierra's newest game while driving is to draw a
picture and then we have to guess what she drew.

Today we planned to make it to the Extraterestrial Highway

and find a place to boondock near Area 51. We arrived early and took a drive toward Rachel (about 1/2 way) looking for the infamous "Black mailbox" which is now a white mail box covered in grafetti.

To be honest, this part of the trip was for Ian. I never imagined I'd enjoy it at all. But if we had more time I would have stayed in this area for a few more days. Our campsite was beautiful! We stayed at a place called Horneys and it was fairly close to the road but you didn't notice the little bit of traffic on it. More pictures will be posted on the review of this boondocking site.

As Foster luck would have it we managed to finally score our first damage!!! No Ian wasn't pleased but heck...nothing we can do about it! Luckily ir is only the back stab jacks and we will have to live with out it until we can get somewhere to replace the motor.

Ian looking at the damage

The rocky patch we hit which sheared off the motor for our jack.

The girls had a wonderful time playing here

The scenery was beautiful and it was so peaceful...

This jet flew right over us. I pulled up my camera to take a picture as it was flying about
200 feet above this small tree and by the time I got my lense cap off it was already
so far away! We hoped another would come by again but none came as close.
This one was loud but the others were't bothersome at all.

And the excitement of waiting for the jets to fly over just above your heads was so fun!

After the girls went to bed we spent some time outsdie looking up at the stars. For some reason the schedlued UFO meeting Ian had hoped would occur never did but we did see some amazing shooting stars! It was so dark and the sky was so bright with the stars on this moonless night. The sky looks different then at home but we picked out a few simple constellations.

Tomorrow a review of this boondock site and a trip toward Groom Lake and the ever mysterious Area 51.