After a hectic days filming, you expect to get a bit of a rest even if just for a few hours. We all know those films where we have came back to the base sorted out the next day's shoot and collapsed into bed.
After unpacking and checking camera and radio batteries and making sure everything was on charge for the following shoot, food was the next order of the day and a hot shower too, or so we thought.
Although we were treated to an air show by some of the strange craft that inhabit this area of the desert nothing prepared us for the night extravaganza we were about to hear, see and feel.
By late evening most of us had our eyes firmly closed in slumber, however our ears were in for a treat as unexspectedly our living quarters shook to the thunderous roar of the unidentified flying objects tearing through our atmosphere up above.
In a crazed rush, pots and saucers went flying as we all ran outside hurriedly pulling on jackets, cameras in hand, lifting our eyes to the sky once more, we saw the reason for the near earthquake experience we just went through.
The sky was filled with the lights and the roar of hyper sonic aircraft shooting across the darkness above leaving trails like tracer bullets, dropping flares whilst strange hovering satellites to the north & south were in synchronous orbit, almost in line with the Extraterrestrial Highway running alongisde the town.
To the south west, above Groom Dry Lake within the complex of the famous Area 51, the mountains were lit as though a distant city existed in the mountains beyond, illuminating the peaks in the night.
Many unfamiliar aircraft of varying speed, size and colour signature were inhabiting the air once more.
Nothing, not even our new friends at the little Ale'Inn, had prepared us for this.
Not the strange interference on our crew radios nor the Area 51 guards that took coffee at the Little A’le’inn each day, not even the sound of constant air traffic that interupted us during filming would get us accustomed to the strange and wonderful world that is Rachel, Nevada.
