Groom Lake Road, Black Mailbox and Rachel, 01 May 2012
by CJ

During a week visit out to Laughlin and Vegas, decided on way home to visit the standard ET photo points, The Extra Terrestrial Highway, Groom Rd base entrance, black (white) mailbox, the Little A'Le'Inn.

The ET Highway sign - Where the 51'ers park, 2 vehicles, 1 had nellis base sticker, other nothing. Was kind of disappointed, there was so many stickers on there you almost could not read the sign.

Groom Lake Rd - Just past the intersection of Groom Lake Road and Mailbox road, saw a white pickup truck. Just before I saw a long/large trail of dust of someone racing down the road that just stopped. I figure it was Mr. and Mr. Cammo that raced up, pulled into farmer field and waited. We were about 6 miles from "the signs". They followed about 100 yards back, just for "fun" I slowed until I was about 20mph, and they stayed right there. Then when I stopped, they got within about 50 yards and stopped. We waited for a short bit then continued on. Got to the entrance, pulled off to side, took a couple of photos and as I did they passed me. Got a pretty close pic of their vehicle - No plates at all on rear. Guy in passenger seat shielded his face as they drove past. Unfortunately my camera was low on juice and took a bit to cycle, so they were not as close as I had hoped when the picture finally snapped.

Black Mailbox - As is known, now white, again a bunch of stickers all over it. As I pulled up, another white truck as waiting there that took off down mailbox road. I stopped to get a couple of pics another white pickup came roaring in from mailbox road, then got out to highway and went back towards Groom Lake Road.

Little A'Le'Inn - overall was kind of disappointed, guy working there was nice, but food was not really good. Got a couple of souvenir's ate and left.

Couple of odd things I noticed:

Out on Groom Lake Road, I had 0 bars on cell phone, then at a certain point it just jumped to 4 bars for voice and Data.. having found lots of dead spots in coverage is not surprising, but usually they slowly work their way up not jump right to near max. kinda like went thru a electronic "curtain".. may be nothing, but any chance they have some sort of cell blockage?

While I was driving about 20 min outside of Rachel towards Tonopah, saw 2 small dark objects fly past ahead of me. Sun was kind of in my eyes and originally thought the 1st was a bird till I saw the second and realized that they were moving too fast and no wing flapping. Either they were planes and quite a bit farther away or closer and UAV type things. By the time I realized what they were (or weren't) and reached for the camera, they were already out of sight near the hills to the north. My windows were open but did not hear anything.

Shortly after the 2 objects, had a military looking helicopter fly overhead and nearby for a bit before heading back towards the NTR areas. Not too close but there was no one else out on the road near me so I assume they were looking me over.


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