There's a rocket in my pocket

Eros...

So last night while I was waiting for Amy to finish her post, I fell asleep. I'm still recovering from the 21 hour driving marathon to Anchorage. So this is a day late. The only thing I wanted to share was how these kids are pretty much like other high school students. They don't live in igloos, they don't wear mukluks everywhere, sure they may hunt the occasional moose, beluga, or seal, but people hunt down in the lower 48 as well. I was talking to a few of them and they thought it was funny that when they get pen pals, everyone asks how it is to live in an igloo. These kids have playstation, x-box, internet, and all that jazz. The only difference is that they come from towns that range from 400-1000 people. It's just something that continually surprises me as well so I thought I'd reiterate it.

On to today...

So today we went out to Poker Flats. What? You've never heard of it? It only the largest and sole university owned rocket range in the world. It's owned by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and it's about 45 minutes in the mountains.


Here is a picture of the entrance...pretty fancy huh?

Now they SAY that it's primarily for studying the Aurora Borealis, but we all know that it was built to launch nukes at the commies back in the day. It was really cool though. We got a tour of the facility including the launch pads. There were even a couple of rockets laying around

that the kids got to look at up close...


Then the kids all got to launch their own model rockets that they made in class.


Not a bad launch pad huh?


This one burned up on re-entry


I didn't think Amy would be able to get this shot, I was wrong and I'm sorry to everyone out there.

So it was a pretty cool morning. Now we're waiting to see the kids perform some Alaskan native dances. They have a class and today is the recital. It should be interesting. Look for pictures later this evening.

I hope everyone is having a nice day. It's 2:30 here so I'm assuming nobody will really see this until tomorrow, unless maybe Jonathan since he's probably still at work.