My Trip to The Beach Day 1: Grave Digger, Unpacking, and Military Ordinance

Jul 12, 2008 // by David Bates // Life Stories // No Comments

After a 5 ½ hour trip starting at 6AM and cleaning up the baby after he got carsick, the crew and myself stopped at Grave Digger’s workshop. For those of you who may not know Grave Digger is a world known Monster Truck. My nephew who is three now would have killed us if we had not stopped there. The Shop I must say was pretty cool and I especially enjoyed seeing the older trucks parked out front. I took several pictures of the event and placed a sideshow below for your viewing pleasure.

When we arrived at the house we were all in awe at how beautiful it was. The house was a two bedroom one level nestled about 300′ from the Albemarle Sound. We quickly lifted the hurricane windows and setup our fans to cool the place off. We then moved around some furniture to fit our beds and began unpacking our overstuffed cars.

After we unpacked I decided to take a stroll down the sound with my nephew. We happened upon a long shiny metal cylinder. I decided to take a closer look and picked it up. To my surprise the cylinder had several items on it in bright red such as ?Warning Do Not Touch? ?May Cause Severe Burns? ?Call Military or Police Immediately?. I also noticed that the cylinder had instructions on it for hand launching. I believe it was as I was reading the hand launching instructions that I noticed the cylinder sparking and smoking from its tip! I threw down the cylinder and that it started hissing so I grabbed my nephew?s hand and ran back to the house to call 911. Shortly after my call a man came in a emergency response truck and explained that the cylinder was a phosphorous flare used by the base on the other side of the sound to light up the night sky. He placed the cylinder in a bucket of sand and went on his way.