Labor Day Weekend

Well, we had a very pleasant Labor Day weekend. Saturday was spent scraping the house, doing a little work around the place, and then we went out to visit at Mom and Vic's place where Nana and Granddad were. We sat out for a while while Tess napped in the car, then we all drove off to a very beautiful field where we used to go sledding as kids.

The field was just hayed a week ago, so the remaining ground cover was short. We took the model rocket (El Cheapo Wal-Mart brand) and set it up upwind on one side of the field. We flew it 3 times with "B" Motors, which shot it up and away, and we had great fun. The 4th flight we put in a "C" motor, which launched the thing probably 500 feet or more, and we actually lost sight of the nose cone- although by carefully aiming the lauch pole, we had the rocket body come down to within 20 feet of where we had launched it. :)

Vic finally spotted the nose cone parachuting down about a quarter mile away- all the way across the field, where it went down over a small rise. I waded into grass that became higher and higher, until it was at the height of my head. It was rough going, with lots of bees around, holes, and finally, a wideish muddy stream that I quite failed to clear by jumping it. I did eventually find the nosecone, no worse for wear, and I hiked back through the mini-brush and streamage (again failed to clear it on the way back) and fought my way out to clear land again, shedding mud in all directions, triumphantly presenting the rocket to Nate.

I was too tired to continue any more flights however, plus Nate had lost interest and wanted to go across the street to the playground. Those "C" motors are a freaking handful!

Monday I went "hunting" with Nate in the WMA near our house. I wanted to go armed, in case something offered an interesting shot, but Molly was too nervous about Nate being around guns. I'm still not sure what her though process is regarding this, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't know either. Nate and I ended up just scouting some of the area, but it was still so mosquito infested that we bugged out pretty quickly. Hearing that a 13 year old boy died locally from a mosquito-transmitted virus didn't help much, either.