Believe it or not, there’s a lot to love about Yuma. One of our favorite things is the nearly constant air show we’re attending — without having to fight crowds or pay an admission fee.
Yuma is home to a Marine Corps Air Station…
…where they conduct an annual air show and have offered tours of the base in the past. We’ve covered both of those in past posts and honestly I thought I’d about run out of things to say about Yuma’s aerial aces. Of course, that would be underestimating the Marines, and no one should ever do that!
Nearly every day something amazing flies overhead. Sometimes it’s a big, graceful cargo plane…
…and other times it’s an Osprey, those cool machines that convert from airplane to helicopter (who says transformers are a thing of fiction?):
I love hearing and watching metal birds soar, but capturing fighter jets in flight is a challenge. They are so fast it’s easier to get a patch of sky instead of the jet…
…or nip the tail or nose off:
Because we get the best views from near the fairground, I do manage to get a few decent shots, but usually with their wheels down:
Even so, some of these newest jets are so incredibly fast they’re out of sight before the camera can even find them against the sky.
Patience and luck do pay off:
You’d think with all this activity I’d stop looking out the window when I heard the hum of aircraft. But you never know what might be hovering overhead…. So at about six p.m. one late January evening when I heard the distant drone of a plane I almost didn’t raise the shade next to me in the RV.
I’m glad I did. It was raining people over the desert:
The next day we drove the Jeep out to the area where it looked as though they’d landed and could only find vehicle tracks… not a sign they had ever been there.
No matter where we are, we always remember to look up because any view of the sky is worthy of wonder.
