October 22, 1989: These images were taken at Edwards AFB at the Rogers Dry Lake "public viewing area". We arrived late in the afternoon so that we could get a good spot in the lake bed parking lot. My good friend Colby and his family joined Jessica and me for the adventure this time. He drove an RV and we enjoyed a luxurious campsite as our base camp.

We took bikes for everyone and enjoyed the wide open lake bed playground. I love the photo of Jessica riding her first bike on the hard packed and historic dirt of Edwards AFB. The mood was relaxed and very comfortable. It was my 4th time to the high desert in just a year, and it felt just as special this time, as it did the first time. The security patrols were very friendly, and provided drinking water to whoever asked for it.

When the sun set, Colby fired up the grill and we all had an excellent meal of salad, steaks, burgers, and chicken. Afterwards, the kids cooked marshmallows over the grill and Colby played music on the guitar. The kids fell asleep before too long and we stayed up late talking, singing and socializing with the crowd that kept growing slowly, with new arrivals pulling in and parking all night.

As the sun set, I set the Nikon up on the tripod and took some long exposure shots of the runway lights and facilities of Edwards AFB and Dryden Flight Research center. The lights across the vast lake bed were beautiful in the darkening distance.

Lake bed panorama of the lights of Edwards AFB.

October 23, 1989: The morning came early for me, and I was up well before dawn. The gorgeous sunrise was cut short by a large bank of fog that rolled over us as the sun began to make its way over the eastern horizon. In its first rays, the fog had left our immediate area and had parked itself on the lake bed between us and the air base, several miles to our west. The scanners soon came alive with discussions about the weather, particularly the fog, at the primary landing site. The view across the lake in the early morning light was both beautiful and surreal - with the bank of fog obscuring all but the most elevated features of the Edwards and Dryden sites.

Also everpresent, as always, were the omnipresent US Army security forces flying all around the perimeter in their Huey choppers. These guys were all business, and it was always reassuring to know that they were there. Such professionals. There were also US Air Force range and safety helicopters perusing the area.

We whiled away the morning by browsing the various vendor booths and their selections of aviation pins and patches. These had been set up [among us] on the lake bed floor. Several vendors were selling coffee and donuts and the morning was very casual. Yet, there was an understated aura of anxious excitement about what was coming. Every telemetry call from the scanner, and every pass of the STA took us that much closer to the arrival of the orbiter, Atlantis.

It was a barley perceptible light grey speck off in the distance to the northeast. I had put a fresh roll of film in the camera and had 24 pictures to squeeze off of this perfect profile view. The first three photos of the roll were not printed, because the shuttle cannot be differentiated from the sky. Beginning with image 4 of the roll, the shuttle can be discerned. What is nice about this photo, is that the STA can be seen in a chase position to the shuttle. The rest of the images from this roll capture the landing profile and eventual touchdown on the concrete runway out on the Rogers lake bed. In typical "Murphy's Law" form, my camera suffered significant light leakage that affected half of the twenty photos of this perfect landing. While this was (is) disappointing, the BEST photos emerged unscathed. This light leak problem would continue to haunt me, and ruin numerous photos [on an intermittent basis] for another 4 years, until the camera was eventually stolen. I just never seemed to have the money then to get it properly repaired.