What in the what?

Some Smitty friends invited us to drive halfway across the state with them to launch their freshly built rocket at this year's Fire In The Sky. We Smittys have built a few rockets of our own but the ones we built are children's toys that can be bought as kits at any hobby shop and launched at the local field. The rockets at FITS are quite a bit more serious... composite fuselages, on-board electronics, engines as big as a man's forearm, FAA clearance required to launch, and a whole slew of other details that set them apart from the kid's toy version. There were kids at the event but this was definitely for big people.

The pre-flight set up is somewhat similar to the toy version but there's more motivation to do it right 'cause if these rockets get lost or destroyed there's more at stake than a $10 kit and 2 hours of build time. Basically you need to make sure the parachute and a bunch of cordage is neatly packed in the body tube and the nosecone is put on right.

Your handy work must pass inspection to get a "flight card" and you gotta have a flight card to get assigned a launch pad.

Eventually they call your group over the loud speaker and you can put your rocket on the launch pad and do the final preparation to launch.

Meanwhile, all the kids are running around having a great time in the fields of eastern WA. Pre-school age kids seemed largely uninterested in the rocket thing, but were happy to have a lot of space to run and dirt to dig.

Don't forget to snap that potentially final picture... you know... just in case.

Then you sit around and wait some more...

... until finally you hear your name over the PA and it's your turn to launch.

We hung around the rocket thing for a few hours and decided it was time to drive to the campsite we had reserved at Lake Chelan State Park.

The Eastern WA weather wasn't the picture perfect sunny, warm and blue skies that citizens of Pugetopolis head east for but it was warm, sunny, and dry enough to play around the water and get a little wet. We took turns paddling our new (to us) canoe to explore nearby coves and collect the small pieces of driftwood that the kids were fascinated with. The water was a beautiful shade of blue and when the wind wasn't blowing you could see the bottom quite a ways out.

The lake level is down 8 or so feet right now so there are several sandy beaches exposed that would otherwise be at the bottom of the lake. The kids took full advantage of the dry and accessible sand.

On the drive home we stopped at the Rocky Reach Dam on the Columbia River. It was interesting but I was a bit disappointed that the tour didn't go into the dam the same way I remember the tour of the Hoover Dam being when I went as a kid. I didn't think to ask if they used to have a more in-depth tour (pre 9/11/01) or if it's always been so lame.

In the end we saw new sights, went new places, and hung out with good friends, so it was an excellent weekend.