It’s Road Trip time again! We left September 15 and returned home September 23. That’s a long trip for us. Hopefully I will get these photos sorted and write my blog posts in a shorter time period than it took me to post about my 5 day Ohio trip (which took me about 6 weeks).

Should I tell you where we were headed or let that be revealed? Hmmm. Let’s just say East.

As always it seemed as though it took days to get organized enough to go away for over a week. We left almost on schedule just after noon on Sunday. Farm-sitter #1 (Farm Club member) had just arrived. We petted the dogs one last time and drove away.

I guess this photo reveals where we were headed, but not what we’d be doing. The immediate goal was to get to Winnemucca, NV in time to get a tour of the airbase where Matt was temporarily stationed before they locked up at 6 p.m.

It was Reno Air Race weekend and we saw the Thunderbirds pass over as we were driving through.

We made it to the Winnemucca airport a little after 5 p.m. Matt showed us around.

Matt rides in the plane that circles above all the others on wildfires. He listens to at least 9 different radio channels—planes in the air, crews on the ground, etc, looks at multiple versions of maps on his iPad, and is responsible for organizing the Air Attack. His plane flies above all the rest and he manages the retardant planes, the helicopters, and any other aircraft that are involved with the fire.

I don’t know how it all works but this is where they mix the slurry for the air attack planes.

Here is where they load the planes with retardant. Can you tell?

This is another plane that was at the base. The Boise Smokejumpers were here waiting for an assignment. Chris (my smokejumper son), stationed in McCall, Idaho was on an assignment in Colorado.

It was good to be able to meet up with Matt while we were driving through. He was leaving the next day for California.

These structures were noticeable as we drove in. They are part of Loon, an Alphabet subsidiary, that provides internet access via high-altitude balloons (11 miles up) to remote areas. Those structures are the launching sites. One is stationary and I think one is mobile.

The first sheep of the trip, just outside of the airport.

On the road headed east. We planned to drive most of the way through Nevada but find a place to stop before getting to Wendover, the last town before Utah. After that we weren’t sure about road-side rests.