Boom!

It was a productive and relaxing week at our lakeside boondocking site.

Well, relaxing except for one of the most frightening things I’ve ever experienced.

Our spot was just a few miles from Holloman Air Force Base and all week we had a squadron of F-16 jets flying training runs overhead (for a kid who grew up wanting to be an Air Force fighter pilot, I was happy as a clam watching them zig-zag all over the sky).  That was all fine and dandy, what scared the living daylights out of us happened for the first time around 2pm Tuesday afternoon (and then about 5 or 6 more times the rest of the week).

On that Tuesday I’ll never forget, we experienced our first ever sonic boom.  In the span of less than a second I had multiple end-life scenarios play out in my head: we just got hit by a semi-truck (not very realistic with where we were staying but that was my first thought), one of our propane tanks exploded, the fighter jets accidentally dropped a bomb or fired a missile in the wrong area.

It was loud, it shook the 5^th wheel and rattled the windows, and it darn near gave me a heart attack.  Like I said, we experienced a few more during the rest of the week but I can’t say they ever got less startling. But it was also pretty cool.  Physics is so fascinating.  And nature is quite pretty as well.

Anyway, other than watching beautiful sunsets over the lake and getting startled by shock waves, we also got the truck fixed mid-week (the “check engine” light warning turned out to be an exhaust issue that was easily repaired in a couple hours) and then yesterday we made the short 13-mile drive over to a KOA in town and had a busy day getting groceries, doing laundry, dumping waste tanks, and refilling water and propane and gas for the truck.

We’re all set for the next leg of our trip and our longest boondocking stay so far: 13 nights off-grid down near Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains national parks.  We leave Alamogordo this morning and should be set up at our next spot by about 2 or 3 in the afternoon.  After the earthquake and the sonic booms, I’m hoping for fewer things shaking the 5^th wheel over the next couple weeks, but we’ll see!