Back at home...

Wow this has been a LONG week. It started Sunday morning with a 6:40am flight out of Greenville to Memphis, then on to Las Vegas with my counterpart from the Tupelo district. We met up with our other counterpart from the Gulfport district in Vegas and crashed out by the pool Sunday evening. But hey, it's VEGAS....we can't just sit at the pool, right? Heck naw! We walked the few blocks to The Strip and took in all the sights - the Paris Casino with it's half-scale Eiffel Tower, the Fountains at Bellagio, the thousands of tourists, and a couple of the older casinos. Of course with a two-hour time difference there, we sort of lost track of just how long our day had been, and it was almost 2am central time before we got back in to the hotel.

Monday morning started bright and early with classes, and lasted ALL day. We had dinner with the Coastal ERC's cousin that lives near Vegas. Tuesday morning we were off to the desert for three days at the Nevada Test Site. This is the most bombed place on earth, 1350 square miles of desert that's seen 928 nuclear bomb tests over the years spanning 1951 to 1992. For obvious security reasons, we have no photos to share from our days out there. But I can assure you it was an awesome experience to move among all that history. I like blowing stuff up, and this is the mother-of-all explosive devices. Seeing these HUGE craters from underground tests, to the massive 1300-foot-wide Sedan Crater left from Operation Plowshare, to training on an actual "ground zero" site where several above-ground shots were fired for military and civil defense planning purposes....it was all an awe-inspiring experience. But three days in the desert is enough!!!

We came back to Las Vegas on Thursday evening, well past ready to fly home Friday. Two delays - once in Las Vegas due to a bad indicator on a thrust reverser, then another delay in Memphis due to bad weather in Greenville - kept me out much later than I'd anticipated. But Ohhhh, did MY bed sleep soooo well!!!

Glad to be home, happy to have been part of the Radiological & Nuclear Hazardous Materials Technician - Bravo Group at the Nevada Test Site this week!