Day off

We spent yesterday at the Knob Creek machinegun shoot. It was a wonderful experience, even though the day started off overcast, cool and very damp.
We arrived around 10 am and there were already lots of people there, we tramped through the mud to the range and one of the first things that I experienced was the distant sound of gunfire. As we got closer the smell of spent gunpowder was thick in the air. What an exciting aroma......
In between the shooting exhibitions we wander aroung the myriad of stalls selling everything from guns, ammo, holsters and the like to clothing.
Even though it was crowded, there was no pushing or shoving, if someone did happen to push against you there was inevidably a "pardon me" or "excuse me". I am definately not one for crowds, but I didn't mind this at all. For the most part people were friendly and polite.

I think one of the best things I experienced was when they were firing the Howitzer. You could not only hear it, you could feel the concussion. There were many targets for the shooters, everything from buckets, to cars, boats, large kitchen appliances and an old semi-trailer. It was fun to watch them all slowly dissapear from being hit with different caliber rounds and flame throwers. The trailer caught fire from being hit with tracers and lent a smoky atmosphere to the rest of the targets.

The sun came out around noon and really helped to take the chill off. It was shortly after we had lunch that we were able to get closer to the fence that seperates the shooters from the audience. So we had an excellent view of this round of shooting. We were also a lot closer to where the Howitzer was. It was so very cool to watch it being loaded and fired!

All in all a very good day. This is an event that I look forward to attending again.