Just got back from the cross country trip. Area 51 and Rachel were a lot of fun. Pulled into the Little A'le'inn at about 830 at night. We actually hit a jackrabbit on the way in and were pretty paranoid afterwards about the many cattle signs along the road since it was so incredibly dark. Anyways, me and my friend from college were the only ones staying at the motel that night, so we played a quick game of pool, discussed what and what not to do at the border and got some videos from the evidence room. I was actually suprised that they didn't have more stuff on area 51. alot were just sci-fi movies and alien abduction stuff. The room wasn't that bad even though I was dissapointed with the shower head. I'm 6'7", so that low shower head was absolute torture.

Got an early start the next morning. They started serving breakfast at 8 and we picked up some stuff from the giftshop and then were on our way to the black mailbox by about 9. In keeping with classic tradition, we left our mark on the mailbox and continued up 375 to Groom Lake Rd. Drove the 25 miles to the border and pulled off the road right before the sign.

Not suprisingly, the gaurds were up on that hill behind the sign looking down on us. I immediately got out the binoculars and took a good look at them. Gave a peace sign to the driver and he waved back. Right after that we saw a truck coming from base and he too waved at us on his way out. After taking a lot of video and pictures of the sign, we started hiking the border and actually saw some pretty cool stuff.

If you go up the hill to the right of the pull off area, you will meet another trail going downhill (north) towards the right side of the gaurd truck hill. We were very cautious and kept a good eye on those posts at all times. Saw some more restricted area signs leading up trails to the gaurd hill and actually got to within about 50 feet of their truck. We were able to look up and get a good look at the driver with our video camera.

Kept on walking north and then saw a silver sphere on one of the orange posts. We were really excited about getting so close to what we assumed to be some sort of audio or motion surviellance device. After that we walked back to the truck to put a new tape in. Then we saw those werid looking cameras on tripods on the hill to our west. So, we walked back about 50 yards and started climbing up the biggest hill in the area.

That's when things started getting a little weird. We saw another truck drive up to the gaurds and have a little conference. Then, we were suddenly buzzed by an F-16. It couldn't have been more than 200 feet above us. I assumed that it wasn't anything special since I heard about the normal Blackhawk that patrols the base. Kinda thought the tower might have told the pilot, "hey, we got these two guys out at the front gate...why don't you give them something to look at."

After we reached the top of that hill, we were able to get an incredible view of thier gaurd house around the curve of the road we couldn't see around while standing on the lower hill across the road. Got some great video of that and then started back down the hill when the 1st gaurd truck started coming down the hill towards our truck. There was no way I could've gotten down the hill in time to get close to them, but they took our tag number down and we videoed them driving back to the gaurd house to take a break and probablly put it in their system.

We figured it was time for us to go since the new gaurd was poster closer than the old one and headed back down Groom Lake Rd. with about 75 minutes of video and 50 pictures. We were happy with what we saw and definately had a great time stirring things up a little. Anyways, just wanted to give you a little report of our experiences there. I would definately be interested in doing it again, but next time I want to look into going to the top of Tikaboo Peak.