Heading for Nevada

Our next stop on the way to Gardnerville, NV, was the campground at Sonora Bridge. It's an unassuming little campground. Just the basics, but really nice views of the Walker River canyon. The spaces are fairly widely situated, and the tall pines provide spotty shade for most of the day, provided by what I think are Ponderosa pines. Their big, beautiful cones covered the ground, along with a nice bed of long needles. Shiner liked to lay on them in the sun. Very comfortable, but now she's complaining as I work to get the pine sap knots out of her fur. I think they'll be with us for awhile, so she looks like she has spots!

Sonora Bridge Campground

The entertainment for the afternoon was provided by the Marine Corp Mountain Warfare Training Center, located just over the hill in Pickel Meadow. We had jets and helicopters of several types flying overhead as the left and returned to the base. It kept us pretty busy trying to determine exactly what each aircraft was, especially since the jets fly at such a high altitude.

The Mountain Warfare Training Center is one of the Corps most remote and isolated posts. The Center was established in 1951 to provide cold weather training for military personnel bound for Korea. It has been the source for mountain training for every generation since. Now, the MWTC provides pre-deployment training in support of the war in Afghanistan.

Flight training over the Sierras, Lone Pine, CA

We ran in to some of these folks a couple of years ago when we were camped in the Alabama Hills, down near Lone Pine, CA. They were flying exercises over the peaks of the Sierras, and over our campsite, then too.
They use this part of the Sierra Mountains extensively for combat training as it's so similar to the mountain regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This area where the training center is located, just south of Lake Tahoe, is well over 6,000 feet, so the winters are harsh and the air thin. Maybe not quite as severe as conditions in the middle east, but a good training ground none the less.

One night was sufficient at Sonora Bridge, so we loaded up and pulled in to our host's home in Gardnerville by lunch time. They have a heavy social schedule planned for us, so we needed to take the afternoon off to rest up!