Family Outing -- Army Style

A guy looking very Army-ish. 

I think he was actually on his cell phone.

As a military family we get to do some really cool things sometimes. I think the Army tolerates that because it helps to balance out all the other inconvenient stuff we have to put up with.

We got to go see something that had never happened before. T sent me a message to let me know that if we wanted to see a unit shoot that L and I could come out and watch. Yay! It wasn't special because we were there. It was special because it was the farthest that anyone had ever fired artillery on the post. Since we can hear the thundering roar from the firing and impact from our home an hour away, it was really exciting to get to see what had been making all that noise.

L didn't like it. He had been really excited and even found some earplugs to bring along. But he wasn't prepared for the percussion wave. I really doubt that it's something that you can be prepared for anyway. It is impossible to describe. It went something like this. A puff of dust, a bigger cloud of dust immediately followed by an almost ear-splitting boom then a shock wave. Pretty scary to a little guy. So we hung out inside and watched out the window....in the a/c with one of T's friends and his little boy.

People standing around looking all official and stuff. It was a pretty big deal.
I especially liked the official  forest camo side-by-side ATV.

Big guns make a big boom. The cloud of dust is what we could see just before we felt the percussion wave.
I'm not sure who the lady is out front or why she felt that it was necessary to bring her designer dog.
You can't see it, but it was there, sparkly collar and all. I suspect that it had painted toenails.
They totally messed up the coolness of this picture.

I'm glad these people are my friends.

These too.  

 

I like the menacing look of the dust and smoke. If you aren't afraid of the United States military, you should be. I mentioned that it was the farthest anyone had ever fired on post, right?
Well, let me just say that you would be hit before you even knew there were any tanks within miles.