Black Rock Desert

Wow. This was the stop along the trip that changed us from going clockwise though the US to counterclockwise. We've been launching model rockets for quite a few years now and have a lot of fun doing it. In fact, Eric's Science Fair project this year was to determine optimum fin shapes and sizes for model rockets. He won first place at his school and third place in the county with his final presentation.

As I was prepping the itinerary for the trip I came across one of our local  amateur rocketry organizations planning one of their semi-annual high powered rocket launches in Black Rock Desert the first weekend in August. We were originally going to be heading through that part of Nevada at the beginning of our trip, but by reversing it we would end up within 100 miles at the right time. Eric built a special rocket for the trip, one that would use the maximum size motor allowable without special certification, and about four times more powerful than we could ever launch locally. This was going to be a highlight of the trip.

There's enough stuff to show from our day and half there that I made sub-pages for it.

• Finding the launch site
• Eric's launches
• Other notable launches