One of the things you will note as you travel around the USA is the preponderance of huge military bases. I am not talking of those many Air Force and Marine Air bases that seem to be everywhere, I mean interesting bases that you see from the highway and just on our little holiday trip.

If you want to avoid Las Angeles you veer east from Bakersfield where you drive by the famous Edwards Air Force base just on the right.  Now this is famous for Chuck Yeager flights and all the Skunk Works development of secret aircraft and Area 51 where they keep the UFOs.  I mean it is right there as you drive by.  I am sure if you stop on the highway and use binoculars you can see the famous hangar.

Days later we are driving up to Las Vegas.  In the north end of town is the Nellis Air Force base which you can easily see from the taller resorts.  No big deal but just north of Vegas is the testing range where they hold all the air combat and bombing training.  You take highway 95 north and you see lots of planes heading in for combat training.

Again just north of Vegas is a small air base in a desert valley beside the highway called Creech base.  If you look at the runway you see small planes that look the size of Piper Cubs.  This is the Drone training and testing centre.  The Drones that they fly over bad countries and blow up bad people.  Again right there.  Granted you would not like to serve on this base as it is barren but I suspect they all live in Vegas and commute up.

Further north in Nevada as we come come across another wide desert valley we see hundreds and then thousands of tent like concrete bunkers on both side of the highway spreading out to the horizon.  These are the 3000 bunkers that hold the largest ammunition inventory in the world.  Even Pat pointed out that all that seem to separate us on the road from the bunkers was a barbed wire fence.

When you are driving through mountain ranges and vast desert expanses, these are interesting details.