Well maybe not damnation. That would be bad. But definitely hellfire. A few weeks ago, Noah, Josh and myself went to Utah Rocket Clubs annual rocket launching event called Hellfire 15.

They hold the event on the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah. The salt flats are an amazing place. It’s, well flat and full of salt. As we drove to the event, Josh dared me to see how fast I could go. Under severe peer pressure, I raced the car to almost 80 MPH! Whoa nelly. Try not to be such a rebel. If Noah hadn’t of been with us, I would have tried to push it to 90. I know, I know, crazy talk.

The ground was wet from the monsoon rains the night before and so the salt was wet and sticky. Just walking on the stuff caused a buildup and made it hard to walk. We picked a great spot on the safety line and setup a small shade to watch the launches.

All the people we met were really friendly and talked at great length about how the got into rocketeering and the costs involved. Some of those motors can run upwards of $800! Once I started calculating the costs I realized, I probably wouldn’t be getting into this. We did see a lot of families and dads and sons working together building rockets. Maybe one day when I’m rich.

Some pictures of the rocket launches. As you can see, these aren’t your run of the mill hobby store rockets. Some of these were as tall as 10ft. Walking down the safety line looking at all the setups, there was one that had to be at least 20ft tall. I don’t think they were launching it though. The last picture in this set, they had to call the FAA to get clearance to launch it. It went about 10,000 ft in the air!

Every once and a while the announcer would come over the intercom and say, “ok folks, time to apply the sunscreen.” We had put sunscreen on and were pretty much sitting under a shade all day and so we disregarded the announcement. I wish I hadn’t. Sitting on that white salt, the reflection totally burned us. I had a sunburn all the way up to where my hat line was. Next year we will pay attention to those instructions!

It was a great day and a lot of fun. Once I got home I had to immediately wash the car. We had salt built up on all of the wheel wells and all over the car. When I pulled in to drop Josh off, the car next to us thought we had snow on the car.