Cheryl pointed out recently that our travel blog has been somewhat neglected. Well in truth it’s been completely neglected. The whole point of the thing was to detail our big trip through Europe. So to get warmed up, we blogged all about preparing to travel. Then for practice, I blogged about one small trip to Alaska where I actually traveled. Once the big travel occurred…. nothing. It’s funny how that works. We were too dang busy traveling to bother talking about traveling. Six countries in two weeks can do that! Then once we got back I was too tired and lazy to write and the editor did not nag me much. So here it is six months later and not a word has been written. Shame shame.
So I thought about it for a while. I am traveling now. But I am on a military deployment. If I was in Alaska or Hawaii or Europe I’d feel pretty comfortable blogging about my military travels. But I’m not. I’m somewhere else. I’m somewhere less friendly doing stuff a little more directly tied to the war effort than I was when I was deployed to Japan, Europe (2x), and many US locations. Due to operational security (OPSEC), blabbering all over the internet about who, what, when, where, and why is a bit frowned upon. It seems some of these terrorist creeps are actually pretty smart, and if enough people give out enough small pieces of information the big picture comes into focus. I have no interest in helping that along. So I decided that in order to keep some measure of continuity with my current deployment I’ve decided to tell a story about a time when I was deployed to Central Asia. Since most of the Central Asian countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan …etc) are very demographically similar we’ll just call this country Stanistan. You can pick whichever one you want and pretend it was there. In the immortal words of Dragnet: “The story you are about to read is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."
But first a disclaimer: While deployed to Stanistan I met a lot of intelligent hard working people. These were not some of them. I in no way wish to insinuate that all the persons of this region of the world are as incompetent as the group of bozos in the story that follows:
It was a cold, dark, and misty dawn, and the overpowering smell of burned garbage was wafting though the crisp smoky air like the evil antithesis of freshly baked blueberry muffins in a warm sunlit kitchen on a Sunday morning. I knew with an uneasy certainty that the unpleasant odors that were making a determined assault upon my frigid nostrils were an ominous precursor to the disturbing events about to unfold before my heavy-lidded eyes. Haha…Just kidding! This is not going to be an attempt at a really poorly written burning trash novel.
But seriously, it stank that morning! Most mornings there stank. Stanistan is a dirt poor third world place and the people there will burn just about anything to stay warm in the winter. Most mornings, after a cold night, had a smoky burned poop smell to them. Plus it was quite cold and I was damn tired! It wasn’t pleasant. Also not pleasant was the fact that I had been picked for TCN (Third Country National) duty. TCN is the generic term the Air Force uses now to describe most any non host-nation worker on a U.S. base in a foreign country. For instance in Saudi Arabia most TCN’s at the U.S. run Prince Sultan Air Base were Pakistanis. In Germany many TCN’s are Romanian. In Stanistan I am quite sure almost all of the TCNs are Stanistanians which would make them Host Nation Nationals not Third Country Nationals…but I digress. You are not reading this to get a military acronym lesson.
So back to the story: I was an Escort that day. Please remove your mind from the gutter. Escorts are regular military folks pulled from their real jobs to do a security guard sort of duty. Basically we are there to keep an eye on the TCN’s when they have to work inside of a secured area. At Stanistan the whole base is a secured area and there was a lot of construction going on, so there were a lot of people escorting the TCN’s as they did their construction work. I had to do that three different times but this time was the most entertaining. For this escort episode I was stationed at a tall guard tower at the main entrance to the main living area of the base. This was well inside the overall secured area and the workers had been well searched before ever getting to my position so the duty should have been mind-numbingly boring. It just involved sitting on my butt on the steps of the tower and watching other people work for ten hours.
I was watching six Stanistanians try to build a road. We had a gravel road from the entrance right through the middle of the area and they were lowering it and preparing it to become a paved road with curbs. It was quite complex and exciting work (sarcasm). This project had been going on for a few days so one end of the road was a hole about eight feet deep and twelve feet wide. The six Stanistanians were delivered to the area from the front gate and my adventure began. They started off the day busily milling about the hole doing nothing for about an hour. They smoked, kicked some dirt and rocks around, and told funny jokes. At least I think they were funny. I don’t speak Stanistanian, but they laughed really loud at themselves. Then the tools arrived! They each got a nice rusty shovel and a hard hat and that was about it. These tools did not inspire them to do any more work however. Most of them just used the shovels as handy leaning tools. This slowed down the milling and rock kicking but increased the smoking and the jokes.
Then it got slightly more interesting. One of the Stanians decided he wanted to spin his shovel like he was trying out for his high school flag twirler team. To give him due credit, he was pretty good. He’d obviously practiced this work technique before, because he could get that shovel spinning like a helicopter rotor. However, once he had the shovel flying in a blur above his head for a minute or so he must have got distracted as it all went wrong. He clubbed himself in the back of the head with the flat side of the shovel’s blade. His hardhat went flying about twenty feet and he practically flew a few steps forward. As he was standing right on the edge of the trench this ended with him diving headfirst into the trench which fortunately had a foot or two of loose soil at the bottom. His crew just stopped milling and it was dead silent until he lifted his head out of the dirt and smiled up at everyone. Then they all really started laughing. I smothered my chuckle and pretended to have not noticed as there was no point embarrassing the poor fellow any more than he already was.
The second part of the adventure started when this rusty red earth-mover shovel arrived. This thing was so old it looked like an uglier twin of Mary Anne from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (I loved that book as a kid). The big difference was this old shovel was a diesel and belched out almost enough black sooty smoke to cover up the burned poop smell! The arrival of the shovel signaled it was time for real work to begin!....sigh….or not. In reality it meant it was time for lunch. The shovel was powered down and the Stanians ate lunch. I myself worked very very hard at my duties and succeeded in not napping. Lunch was about two hours long, and then the milling around began in earnest while the shovel driver spent an hour getting the shovel running again. Finally the shovel was fired up and the maniac shovel driver went to work on the trench. He was a wild man with that shovel digging out scoops of dirt and flinging them in the general direction of an antique dump truck. This included one bucket load that entirely missed the bed of the truck and crashed onto the cab of the truck. The dump truck driver was half asleep and just about jumped through the roof when the load crashed onto his cab. The truck’s door flew open and the driver spewed some of the vilest Stanistanian curse words that I have ever heard. At least I am guessing it was vile spew because the millers stopped milling and looked shocked and the shovel driver looked angry and sheepish all at once. Then just like that the dump truck driver slammed his door shut and went back to his nap. Then the entire crew of millers started laughing again. They were a jovial bunch. I failed this time to contain my chuckle.
This is where the six millers finally found real work. They shoveled up all the dirt that missed the dump truck and threw it back in the hole. It was kind of counterproductive to be filling the hole while the shovel emptied it, but since the power shovel was much faster they made some good progress. The danger of this method of hole digging is the manual shovelers were very close to the diesel shovel and the big hole. This resulted in the last of the comedy of errors that had helped keep me focused all day long. The maniac shovel driver must have been upset by the earlier exchange because he was shoveling with a vengeance. The shovel was on tracks and the body would spin back and forth from the hole to the dump truck just flinging dirt like a mad man. At the same time the millers would be shoveling up the flinged dirt that missed the truck and would fling it right back in the hole. It was like a well-oiled dysfunctional machine! Until one of the millers, the shovel twirling cheerleader to be exact, mistimed his operation and got in the way of the shovel. I actually cringed at first on this one because I thought he was going to die. The diesel shovel was pivoting back to the hole and the twirler was standing at the hole dumping a shovelful of flung dirt. The heavy four foot high sharp-toothed shovel was heading straight for his upper back and head when he must have caught it in his peripheral vision because he dove out of the way of the swinging shovel in the nick time…. face first, right back into the hole again. This time I couldn’t hold back and when he raised his head with a big dirt faced grin, even I had to laugh right along with the rest of the millers.
That pretty much concluded the entertainment portion of my escort duties. The Stanistanians worked for another two hours or so without any major OSHA safety violations, I stayed awake and did not freeze in the cold, and everyone went home alive and in one piece. That day at least. With the crazy way they worked I can’t imagine no one ever got hurt but at least I didn’t have to see it. I never worked on the road crew again but I did get to see some great winter sidewalk building techniques the other two times I did escort duty. But that’s a much shorter and much more boring story so don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Into the Wild
My last post said something about me letting everyone know how Alaska went as long as it wasn’t a big pile of boredom. I guess since it was only a small pile of boredom I'll see if there is enough interesting stuff to ramble about. I'll start with the mostly boring background info and then move on to my almost interesting Alaskan adventures in the wilds. Be warned. This was not the most exciting trip ever!
My last post ended with me getting buckled into my satanic camp chair as we got ready to land at Eielson AFB in Alaska. On the way down all I saw was trees and lakes. There might have been a road but if so I missed it. Touching the ground actually surprised me because I saw no sign of civilization before we landed. Then I was beginning to think we landed in Anchorage and were taxiing up to Fairbanks because that was the absolute longest taxi I've ever done in an airplane. I heard we missed our parking spot and took a scenic loop to get back to it. Eielson has a ridiculously long flight line so that took a while. We finally parked at the end of the flight line in a corner surrounded by trees and bused on into the Eielson PAX terminal (for you civilian folk PAX is military speak for "passenger" I get the "PA" part but I'm not sure what the X is for). Weather-wise it was hot: 88 degrees and very humid. I was not pleased. I didn't fly 1500 miles north from hot Spokane to jump into a sauna. So I was hot, tired, and sweaty and just wanted to get to my room. That lasted right up until I actually got to my room. I've been in the Air Force for nineteen years now and this was hands down the absolute worst billeting I've ever been in. They call the building a "contingency dorm." I've been to the middle-east and spent time in real "contingency dorms." They were all nicer than this dump. I think it might be safe to say that outside of a tent city these could be the worst Air Force dorms in existence. So anyhow I got settled into my tiny prison cell styled room with my two cell mates and made my bed, unpacked a bit, changed into some civilian type clothes, and quickly escaped to the "day room" where the fans tried hard to cool us down. Alaska does not seem to believe in the concept of air conditioning. I did not find one air conditioned building anywhere that I went. Fortunately the weather changed pretty quickly and for most of the trip the high temps were in the 60's and 70's.
As you can see there was not much to blog about since you're getting weather reports and dorm descriptions. Work was not much more interesting. We got our hands on a government truck to get to work and back. This truck was my work office most of the day. We Fairchild guys all worked from 3pm to midnight and my job was "expeditor." The POL expeditor is basically just a more experienced and higher ranking guy who drives around the flight line anytime there are fueling operations in progress. The purpose is to have someone there to help the airmen if there is an emergency, procedural disagreement with the aircraft crew, equipment problem, etc… What this ultimately meant is I spent 6-8 hours per day driving a Chevy pick-up around the flight line flattening out my butt. But at least the truck had air conditioning. There were a couple times where I earned my pay but they weren't really any more exciting than the weather and the prison dorms so I'll spare you the extra reading.
So that leaves my great Alaskan adventures. We had plenty of down time because this exercise is all about pilots training to fight. As seen in Top Gun, Pilots like to fly fast for a while then run off and party. Things were no different here. There was no night flying and no weekend flying. I had two full weekends to burn. Our GOV (government truck) was allowed off base but we were told to limit it to the local Fairbanks area so our touring options were a bit limited. We were supposed to only use it to go to meals or do basic shopping and such. It was not to be taken to bars, out fishing, to hiking trailheads, or four wheeling. Truck abuse could result in losing the right to use the truck. We sorta kinda followed that guidance. The first Saturday was mostly a scouting trip. We visited North Pole where we visited Santa's house and sat on his lap, said hi to his reindeer, took some pictures, and shopped a bit. The only interesting note there was that we found out Santa is actually a Vietnam War vet…who knew?? Then we drove the thirty miles into Fairbanks and planned the rest of our days off.
Sunday was a bit more fun. We went panning for gold! We stopped at Big Ray's Classic Alaskan Trading Company and traded some cash for some gold panning pans and headed into the hills. We had been told there was a very good restaurant up past Fox Alaska near the Eldorado Gold Mine. There is also a place called Dredge No 8 near Fox where you can pan for gold for free. This did not seem much like truck abuse since the ultimate goal was food! Well Dredge No 8 was closed so we drove further up the road to another free gold panning area on Nome Creek in the White Mountains National Recreation Area. Somehow we missed the restaurant because we ended up fifty miles into the middle of nowhere. Alaska is big so I guess fifty miles is still the "local area." This local area was amazingly huge and empty. You could see for miles without a power pole or antenna anywhere to be found. Nor was there any gold anywhere to be found. Mosquitoes were much more easily found so at least something got lunch! Anyway gold panning ended up being kind of fun but a total waste of time. All I brought out of the hills was a dirty gold pan, shoes full of river grit, and an excess of itchy mosquito bite bumps. Back in Fairbanks we finally found a restaurant, had some dinner, and headed back to Eielson.
After another fun week of crappy billeting, mediocre food, and boring work, weekend number two rolled around. We planned a little better this time and Saturday we traded our GOV for one of the rental cars that were provided to a lucky few folks for the exercise. Those lucky enough to get their hands on the rare rental car could go most anywhere as rentals do not have the same restrictions as GOV's. Some maintenance guys had to work Saturday so they had no problems giving up their little unrestricted rental for a nice big shiny GOV pickup. We decided we needed to take advantage of our one day of transportation freedom and headed out early for Denali National Park. Denali is about 150 miles south of Eielson and is the home of Mt McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America. This trip was a lot of fun but for blogging purposes there just isn’t much to say. We drove for two hours through some beautiful empty wilderness and arrived at a tourist trap outside the front gates of Denali. Private cars are generally not allowed past the 15 mile mark on the one road into the park, so we drove as far as we could and turned around. Denali is mostly seen via tour buses that drive anywhere from 6-13 hours round trip into the park and we didn't have time for that so our trip was a bit limited. The highlights were three big caribou (caribous?) and a view of Mt McKinley. The caribou are pretty common but Mt McKinley is hidden by clouds more than 80% of the time so I guess we were pretty lucky to see it. Then we visited the row of tourist traps outside the park for some trinkets and headed back to Eielson.
Along the way home we saw some of Alaska's less famous sights such as the large beige couch on the side of the highway at least fifty miles from any civilization The couch was up on a hill overlooking the highway and was completely covered in stuffed animals, care bears, fuzzy dragons, and a unicorn or two. It was bizarre. Also a bit closer to Fairbanks but a good thirty miles from any visible landing strip was the Alaskan version of the "car on blocks" redneck lawn ornament. Just off the highway sitting in front of a rustic mountain trailer home was a large jet airliner on blocks with the wings removed and an old rusty "air stair" truck pulled up next to it. They say everything is bigger in Alaska and I was impressed. And lastly was the classic roadhouse café "Skinny Dicks: Halfway Inn." This charming place is halfway between Nenana and Fairbanks (hence the name "halfway Inn"). And I'm guessing some skinny guy name Richard might have owned it?? Yep that's enough said about that dive…
Sunday of the last weekend left us back with our GOV and nowhere to go so we decided to go on a moose hunt. We'd been hearing since we got to Alaska about all the moose crawling over the place. So far the only moose I saw was in the mirror of the community bathroom in the prison dorms and I was determined to see a wild one. So the two of us who were not afraid to get up before sunrise loaded up the GOV and headed out to find some moose sausage for breakfast. In Alaska in mid-August the sun sets around 11:00, dusk lasts until 02:00 when it is replaced by dawn which last until 05:00, and then the sun rises. So we were out early. After a few minutes of driving we had the most amazing sunrise I've ever seen. From when the sky turned bloody crimson until the sun actually got above the light clouds took about two hours. It was during that time that we saw the most wild moose. We saw seven before the sun was up and three more after. That kept us busy until the sleepy kids woke up and then we headed off for some more exploring.
Since we were limited by the GOV we headed toward the big pointy mountains south of Eielson. We knew that there is a big Army base down that way somewhere and they must have food so technically we were good to go! The mountains were a ways off and could only be seen on a clear day and Sunday was as clear as they got. We researched from the iPhone on the way down and learned we were heading toward Mt Hayes in the Alaska Range. At 14,000 feet it's no Mt McKinley but it is one of the highest peaks in the US in terms of height relative to the local terrain (prominence). Mt Hayes has 11,500 feet of prominence which puts it in the top 75 in the world. That's still no Mt McKinley which is number three in the world with 20,000 feet of prominence but it still looks pretty damn impressive. Anyway that's enough geography. We just needed somewhere to go and those mountains looked cool. So we climbed into the GOV and headed southeast. The closer we go the more impressive the mountains became. Once we got to Ft Greely (iPhone told us that's where we were going) we were pretty close to the mountains. A little ways past the main gate there was a dirt road heading off towards the peaks and it looked like it should have some sort of GOV authorized food establishment on it…or not… anyway we took the road and headed into the wilderness. About a quarter of a mile in I saw one of the more interesting items on this trip. We had reached an open gate that had a big old military warning sign next to it. It was one of those "Warning all who enter will be shot, water boarded, and eaten by military working dogs" type signs. This one said it was an open military target range and blah blah blah. It also said access on weekends was permitted. Now that's all standard and boring stuff. The interesting thing was the big old sign right next to it that was all in Russian. Now I'm used to everything being translated into Spanish but not so much Russian. I mean is there really a big Russian illegal alien problem in Alaska? Was this sign put up in the free love of the Cold War era 60's so screaming invading commie hordes could be careful to avoid the live range and not get hurt on their way to global domination? Seriously who ever heard of a US Army Base putting up warning signs in English and Russian? Sooo I took a photo and we blazed on into the wilderness. That pretty much ends the interesting part of the trip. I got some nifty pictures of the mountain but we never found a good restaurant and headed back to Eielson hungry.
So that's pretty much the trip. I worked one more boring week and headed on home to Spokane on Friday. I hope Europe is more interesting or this blog is going to die pretty fast. Until next time: Goodbye and das vidaniya…..
My last post ended with me getting buckled into my satanic camp chair as we got ready to land at Eielson AFB in Alaska. On the way down all I saw was trees and lakes. There might have been a road but if so I missed it. Touching the ground actually surprised me because I saw no sign of civilization before we landed. Then I was beginning to think we landed in Anchorage and were taxiing up to Fairbanks because that was the absolute longest taxi I've ever done in an airplane. I heard we missed our parking spot and took a scenic loop to get back to it. Eielson has a ridiculously long flight line so that took a while. We finally parked at the end of the flight line in a corner surrounded by trees and bused on into the Eielson PAX terminal (for you civilian folk PAX is military speak for "passenger" I get the "PA" part but I'm not sure what the X is for). Weather-wise it was hot: 88 degrees and very humid. I was not pleased. I didn't fly 1500 miles north from hot Spokane to jump into a sauna. So I was hot, tired, and sweaty and just wanted to get to my room. That lasted right up until I actually got to my room. I've been in the Air Force for nineteen years now and this was hands down the absolute worst billeting I've ever been in. They call the building a "contingency dorm." I've been to the middle-east and spent time in real "contingency dorms." They were all nicer than this dump. I think it might be safe to say that outside of a tent city these could be the worst Air Force dorms in existence. So anyhow I got settled into my tiny prison cell styled room with my two cell mates and made my bed, unpacked a bit, changed into some civilian type clothes, and quickly escaped to the "day room" where the fans tried hard to cool us down. Alaska does not seem to believe in the concept of air conditioning. I did not find one air conditioned building anywhere that I went. Fortunately the weather changed pretty quickly and for most of the trip the high temps were in the 60's and 70's.
As you can see there was not much to blog about since you're getting weather reports and dorm descriptions. Work was not much more interesting. We got our hands on a government truck to get to work and back. This truck was my work office most of the day. We Fairchild guys all worked from 3pm to midnight and my job was "expeditor." The POL expeditor is basically just a more experienced and higher ranking guy who drives around the flight line anytime there are fueling operations in progress. The purpose is to have someone there to help the airmen if there is an emergency, procedural disagreement with the aircraft crew, equipment problem, etc… What this ultimately meant is I spent 6-8 hours per day driving a Chevy pick-up around the flight line flattening out my butt. But at least the truck had air conditioning. There were a couple times where I earned my pay but they weren't really any more exciting than the weather and the prison dorms so I'll spare you the extra reading.
So that leaves my great Alaskan adventures. We had plenty of down time because this exercise is all about pilots training to fight. As seen in Top Gun, Pilots like to fly fast for a while then run off and party. Things were no different here. There was no night flying and no weekend flying. I had two full weekends to burn. Our GOV (government truck) was allowed off base but we were told to limit it to the local Fairbanks area so our touring options were a bit limited. We were supposed to only use it to go to meals or do basic shopping and such. It was not to be taken to bars, out fishing, to hiking trailheads, or four wheeling. Truck abuse could result in losing the right to use the truck. We sorta kinda followed that guidance. The first Saturday was mostly a scouting trip. We visited North Pole where we visited Santa's house and sat on his lap, said hi to his reindeer, took some pictures, and shopped a bit. The only interesting note there was that we found out Santa is actually a Vietnam War vet…who knew?? Then we drove the thirty miles into Fairbanks and planned the rest of our days off.
Sunday was a bit more fun. We went panning for gold! We stopped at Big Ray's Classic Alaskan Trading Company and traded some cash for some gold panning pans and headed into the hills. We had been told there was a very good restaurant up past Fox Alaska near the Eldorado Gold Mine. There is also a place called Dredge No 8 near Fox where you can pan for gold for free. This did not seem much like truck abuse since the ultimate goal was food! Well Dredge No 8 was closed so we drove further up the road to another free gold panning area on Nome Creek in the White Mountains National Recreation Area. Somehow we missed the restaurant because we ended up fifty miles into the middle of nowhere. Alaska is big so I guess fifty miles is still the "local area." This local area was amazingly huge and empty. You could see for miles without a power pole or antenna anywhere to be found. Nor was there any gold anywhere to be found. Mosquitoes were much more easily found so at least something got lunch! Anyway gold panning ended up being kind of fun but a total waste of time. All I brought out of the hills was a dirty gold pan, shoes full of river grit, and an excess of itchy mosquito bite bumps. Back in Fairbanks we finally found a restaurant, had some dinner, and headed back to Eielson.
After another fun week of crappy billeting, mediocre food, and boring work, weekend number two rolled around. We planned a little better this time and Saturday we traded our GOV for one of the rental cars that were provided to a lucky few folks for the exercise. Those lucky enough to get their hands on the rare rental car could go most anywhere as rentals do not have the same restrictions as GOV's. Some maintenance guys had to work Saturday so they had no problems giving up their little unrestricted rental for a nice big shiny GOV pickup. We decided we needed to take advantage of our one day of transportation freedom and headed out early for Denali National Park. Denali is about 150 miles south of Eielson and is the home of Mt McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America. This trip was a lot of fun but for blogging purposes there just isn’t much to say. We drove for two hours through some beautiful empty wilderness and arrived at a tourist trap outside the front gates of Denali. Private cars are generally not allowed past the 15 mile mark on the one road into the park, so we drove as far as we could and turned around. Denali is mostly seen via tour buses that drive anywhere from 6-13 hours round trip into the park and we didn't have time for that so our trip was a bit limited. The highlights were three big caribou (caribous?) and a view of Mt McKinley. The caribou are pretty common but Mt McKinley is hidden by clouds more than 80% of the time so I guess we were pretty lucky to see it. Then we visited the row of tourist traps outside the park for some trinkets and headed back to Eielson.
Along the way home we saw some of Alaska's less famous sights such as the large beige couch on the side of the highway at least fifty miles from any civilization The couch was up on a hill overlooking the highway and was completely covered in stuffed animals, care bears, fuzzy dragons, and a unicorn or two. It was bizarre. Also a bit closer to Fairbanks but a good thirty miles from any visible landing strip was the Alaskan version of the "car on blocks" redneck lawn ornament. Just off the highway sitting in front of a rustic mountain trailer home was a large jet airliner on blocks with the wings removed and an old rusty "air stair" truck pulled up next to it. They say everything is bigger in Alaska and I was impressed. And lastly was the classic roadhouse café "Skinny Dicks: Halfway Inn." This charming place is halfway between Nenana and Fairbanks (hence the name "halfway Inn"). And I'm guessing some skinny guy name Richard might have owned it?? Yep that's enough said about that dive…
Sunday of the last weekend left us back with our GOV and nowhere to go so we decided to go on a moose hunt. We'd been hearing since we got to Alaska about all the moose crawling over the place. So far the only moose I saw was in the mirror of the community bathroom in the prison dorms and I was determined to see a wild one. So the two of us who were not afraid to get up before sunrise loaded up the GOV and headed out to find some moose sausage for breakfast. In Alaska in mid-August the sun sets around 11:00, dusk lasts until 02:00 when it is replaced by dawn which last until 05:00, and then the sun rises. So we were out early. After a few minutes of driving we had the most amazing sunrise I've ever seen. From when the sky turned bloody crimson until the sun actually got above the light clouds took about two hours. It was during that time that we saw the most wild moose. We saw seven before the sun was up and three more after. That kept us busy until the sleepy kids woke up and then we headed off for some more exploring.
Since we were limited by the GOV we headed toward the big pointy mountains south of Eielson. We knew that there is a big Army base down that way somewhere and they must have food so technically we were good to go! The mountains were a ways off and could only be seen on a clear day and Sunday was as clear as they got. We researched from the iPhone on the way down and learned we were heading toward Mt Hayes in the Alaska Range. At 14,000 feet it's no Mt McKinley but it is one of the highest peaks in the US in terms of height relative to the local terrain (prominence). Mt Hayes has 11,500 feet of prominence which puts it in the top 75 in the world. That's still no Mt McKinley which is number three in the world with 20,000 feet of prominence but it still looks pretty damn impressive. Anyway that's enough geography. We just needed somewhere to go and those mountains looked cool. So we climbed into the GOV and headed southeast. The closer we go the more impressive the mountains became. Once we got to Ft Greely (iPhone told us that's where we were going) we were pretty close to the mountains. A little ways past the main gate there was a dirt road heading off towards the peaks and it looked like it should have some sort of GOV authorized food establishment on it…or not… anyway we took the road and headed into the wilderness. About a quarter of a mile in I saw one of the more interesting items on this trip. We had reached an open gate that had a big old military warning sign next to it. It was one of those "Warning all who enter will be shot, water boarded, and eaten by military working dogs" type signs. This one said it was an open military target range and blah blah blah. It also said access on weekends was permitted. Now that's all standard and boring stuff. The interesting thing was the big old sign right next to it that was all in Russian. Now I'm used to everything being translated into Spanish but not so much Russian. I mean is there really a big Russian illegal alien problem in Alaska? Was this sign put up in the free love of the Cold War era 60's so screaming invading commie hordes could be careful to avoid the live range and not get hurt on their way to global domination? Seriously who ever heard of a US Army Base putting up warning signs in English and Russian? Sooo I took a photo and we blazed on into the wilderness. That pretty much ends the interesting part of the trip. I got some nifty pictures of the mountain but we never found a good restaurant and headed back to Eielson hungry.
So that's pretty much the trip. I worked one more boring week and headed on home to Spokane on Friday. I hope Europe is more interesting or this blog is going to die pretty fast. Until next time: Goodbye and das vidaniya…..
Thursday, August 5, 2010
North to Alaska
Today I thought I'd try something new. Instead of blogging about planning to travel I thought I'd blog about actual travel. Fascinating I know! So most of you know by now that I am heading to Alaska. In fact I'm writing this from the boom pod of a KC135 right now (I'm a bit bored). How all this started is the active duty at Fairchild was tasked with five people for a Red Flag Exercise. They could only send three people and asked the Guard if we could help with the other two. My boss quickly volunteered to cover it and found four people (none of them being me) willing to go. As the trip got closer and closer the volunteers seemed to fade away and dwindled down to one (still not me). Here is where I came in. Since it looks really bad when a unit volunteers to pick up a manning shortfall and then can't cover it, I made the mistake of saying "well if no one else can go I will cancel my vacation and cover it for you." Oops! At this point the search for a volunteer screeched to a halt and I magically became the only possible option. Surprise surprise. So here I am.
Now this is not all bad because I've always wanted to visit Alaska and getting paid to go is a very affordable way to do it. This deployment however became a very big pain in the butt very quickly. For starters I only found out I was going six days before I was told I was supposed to get there. This instigated the scramble to get me orders in time for the trip. Then the date changed, re-changed, unchanged, re-changed some more and finally settled on today two days ago. Then the show-up time drama began. No one could seem to figure out when our plane would leave. Finally yesterday afternoon someone just randomly decided 07:00 was a good time to show up. So at 06:45 Cheryl dropped me off at Fairchild and the entertaining wait began. We all sat around for about three hours pretending to pretend we were busy. Then at 10:00 we loaded up a bus drove out to a KC135 and took off around 11:00.
Fortunately I really don't mind flying on a KC135. For starters there is no TSA. You bring your checked luggage to a pallet and pile it on. Once you get to your destination they unload the pallet and off you go. They is generally no limit to the number of bags and they are all checked for free. What a bargain. Carry-on is even better. The basic rule is if you can carry it up the stairs without getting a hernia and it contains no weapons or dangerous chemicals you are probably good to go. This trip people seem to have brought a large number of fishing poles. Some with tackle attached.
The not so good thing is the seating. The standard "jump" seat in a KC135 is basically a poorly designed fold up camp chair. Then they take about fifty of these camp chairs, attach them in a long row and then bolt them to the curved side of the airplane. About half of them have a bar right under the crack of your butt and due to the curve of the jet fuselage there is absolutely no back support. It's neat. So those who have some good KC135 experience and enough rank to not be shy about moving around scramble for the few good seats as soon at the plane is done taking off. That’s what brought me to the boom pod.
For those of you not familiar with the KC135, it is basically a craptastic 1960's era flying gas can. Its main purpose in life is to perform IFR's (In Flight Refueling). Its secondary mission is cargo movement. Passenger movement and comfort is not high on its list (hence the satanic camp chair seating). To perform its primary mission the KC135 uses a "boom." The boom is really just an extendable fuel straw stuck inside a metal tube with wings that is attached to the bottom of the tail of the jet. When a plane needing fuel comes along, he lines up right behind and below the KC135 (within 15-20 feet….it's crazy close). The fuel straw is then flown by a "boomer" with a computer game style joystick. He lines it up, extends the straw, attaches it to the customer's fuel port, and pumps gas like mad. To do this the boomer lays down in the "boom pod" which is in the very bottom back part of the fuselage right below the tail. He has a nice cushioned contoured pad to lay on with a bank of nice clear windows to look out of. There are also two cozy comfortable cushioned pads for two other people to join the boomer for training or naps. When no in flight refueling is going on it's a darn cozy place to hang out. I spent the first couple hours laying on one of the pads taking a pile of pictures of British Columbia and Southern Alaska from 35,000 feet before the clouds rolled in and I got bored. That led me to this. But now I feel us beginning to descend so I better get strapped back into my camp chair and get ready to land. Fun. If the rest of this trip is not a big nasty pile of boredom I'll let you know how it goes. Until then good by, see ya...or whatever it is they say up here in Alaska.
Now this is not all bad because I've always wanted to visit Alaska and getting paid to go is a very affordable way to do it. This deployment however became a very big pain in the butt very quickly. For starters I only found out I was going six days before I was told I was supposed to get there. This instigated the scramble to get me orders in time for the trip. Then the date changed, re-changed, unchanged, re-changed some more and finally settled on today two days ago. Then the show-up time drama began. No one could seem to figure out when our plane would leave. Finally yesterday afternoon someone just randomly decided 07:00 was a good time to show up. So at 06:45 Cheryl dropped me off at Fairchild and the entertaining wait began. We all sat around for about three hours pretending to pretend we were busy. Then at 10:00 we loaded up a bus drove out to a KC135 and took off around 11:00.
Fortunately I really don't mind flying on a KC135. For starters there is no TSA. You bring your checked luggage to a pallet and pile it on. Once you get to your destination they unload the pallet and off you go. They is generally no limit to the number of bags and they are all checked for free. What a bargain. Carry-on is even better. The basic rule is if you can carry it up the stairs without getting a hernia and it contains no weapons or dangerous chemicals you are probably good to go. This trip people seem to have brought a large number of fishing poles. Some with tackle attached.
The not so good thing is the seating. The standard "jump" seat in a KC135 is basically a poorly designed fold up camp chair. Then they take about fifty of these camp chairs, attach them in a long row and then bolt them to the curved side of the airplane. About half of them have a bar right under the crack of your butt and due to the curve of the jet fuselage there is absolutely no back support. It's neat. So those who have some good KC135 experience and enough rank to not be shy about moving around scramble for the few good seats as soon at the plane is done taking off. That’s what brought me to the boom pod.
For those of you not familiar with the KC135, it is basically a craptastic 1960's era flying gas can. Its main purpose in life is to perform IFR's (In Flight Refueling). Its secondary mission is cargo movement. Passenger movement and comfort is not high on its list (hence the satanic camp chair seating). To perform its primary mission the KC135 uses a "boom." The boom is really just an extendable fuel straw stuck inside a metal tube with wings that is attached to the bottom of the tail of the jet. When a plane needing fuel comes along, he lines up right behind and below the KC135 (within 15-20 feet….it's crazy close). The fuel straw is then flown by a "boomer" with a computer game style joystick. He lines it up, extends the straw, attaches it to the customer's fuel port, and pumps gas like mad. To do this the boomer lays down in the "boom pod" which is in the very bottom back part of the fuselage right below the tail. He has a nice cushioned contoured pad to lay on with a bank of nice clear windows to look out of. There are also two cozy comfortable cushioned pads for two other people to join the boomer for training or naps. When no in flight refueling is going on it's a darn cozy place to hang out. I spent the first couple hours laying on one of the pads taking a pile of pictures of British Columbia and Southern Alaska from 35,000 feet before the clouds rolled in and I got bored. That led me to this. But now I feel us beginning to descend so I better get strapped back into my camp chair and get ready to land. Fun. If the rest of this trip is not a big nasty pile of boredom I'll let you know how it goes. Until then good by, see ya...or whatever it is they say up here in Alaska.
Friday, July 16, 2010
....And then came stuff
So before I get too deep into this potentially boring post I thought I'd explain the reason for this blog. After all what is the point of a travel blog when the only travel we've done lately is to the car dealership for our scheduled maintenance on the Honda Fit? I mean seriously, how boring!! You might also notice I tend to ramble on. It's called "Ramblings of Wanderings" for a reason!!
The "pretend" reason is to keep our family and friends updated on our adventures. The real reason is I am old and forgetful. Cheryl likes to scrapbook our lives and if I don't write it down I'll probably forget half of what happened and for sure I'll forget the names of half the places we visit. So Cheryl the editor says to me the writer (terms used loosely): "Get busy blogging now so we can remember how much 'fun' we had getting ready for this trip." Fun? Really? After some early procrastinating I caved and here I am making potentially boring updates about pre-trip planning stuff. Which brings us to the theme of today's blog: STUFF!!
Anyone who knows us knows we have a lot of stuff, so a big trip is bound to result in more stuff. Stuff before the trip, stuff during the trip, stuff after the trip. Fun!! Since we are still in the planning phase I'll be talking about planning stuff. Now this does not mean planning about what stuff we will be getting (though Cheryl does that too). This all about the stuff we are acquiring now to facilitate the organized acquisition of more stuff!
So...stuff piece number one was a new GPS. We have a nice little Garmin and I thought it would be fun to get European maps for it. I've tooled around Europe a bit on some of my military adventures and I know that without good navigation our trip to Europe could end up with us in some Croatian prison because we turned right instead of left at the Austrian border with Italy. Carrying detailed paper maps for all the countries we are now visiting would be like lugging around a phone book everywhere we go. This would not do so I pulled up the Garmin website and quickly found that for the price of one simple European map update we could buy our own small non-Euro Zone European Country (or maybe Greece ). Sooo Instead I sniped an auction on eBay and got us a brand new refurbished GPS preloaded with 2010 European maps. Wooohooo. My job was done. Cheryl's job was just beginning. Once the GPS arrived I plugged it in, fired it up, and tossed it to Cheryl. Since I’m the designated driver in Europe she has been assigned designated navigator duties. As Cheryl is the navigator we (we being me) decided it was her job to program in every town, hotel, restaurant, museum, castle, bathroom...etc that we want to visit. It wasn't too bad of a job (for me). After all we do have the big trip book listing everywhere we are going and everything we are doing!
Book you say? What book is this? Well as part of our excessive planning Cheryl decided we needed a trip planning book. This does not mean we went to Barnes and Noble to buy "Europe for Dummies." No No No!! We dummies made our own book. This book started as a thin three ring binder with a few Wikipedia pages of Munich, Neuschwanstein, Salzburg and such. Of course if you read the earlier post you might have noticed our plans changed a few times. Every time the plans changed the book changed and got thicker and thicker. Now our travel book has Wikipedia pages for every town we are stopping in for anything other than gas or a toilette. It has all of our hotels (we went from one to eleven with our many plan changes). It has historical sites, tourist traps, natural wonders, museums, churches, and even bathrooms (Venice apparently doesn't have many public ones). It even has a list of foreign foods so we don't accidentally end up ordering something like "blutworst" in Germany (congealed blood/fat sausage) or "carne de asino" in Italy (donkey meat). I think I'll pass. So anyway, it's a good thing we got the GPS instead of a big pile of maps because now our trip book is in a much thicker zip up three ring binder. It is bigger than a phone book and one phone book per trip is enough when luggage weight counts!
I could use that segue and dive right into the upcoming luggage shopping adventure. I could discuss such exciting things as: Luggage sizes, colors, and weights. Features like wheels, handles, tags, and built in scales. But I think maybe I've rambled enough for one day.
For those of you faithful readers (of these two whole posts): Don't worry! If you hang around until October I will start blogging about actual travel. Until then you'll have to put up with whatever obscure ramble the editor tells me to blog about. Sorry! So until next time: ciao...etc
Editor's Note- Like I could MAKE him write about anything. I can't MAKE him do anything, and any one who knows him knows this is true!
The "pretend" reason is to keep our family and friends updated on our adventures. The real reason is I am old and forgetful. Cheryl likes to scrapbook our lives and if I don't write it down I'll probably forget half of what happened and for sure I'll forget the names of half the places we visit. So Cheryl the editor says to me the writer (terms used loosely): "Get busy blogging now so we can remember how much 'fun' we had getting ready for this trip." Fun? Really? After some early procrastinating I caved and here I am making potentially boring updates about pre-trip planning stuff. Which brings us to the theme of today's blog: STUFF!!
Anyone who knows us knows we have a lot of stuff, so a big trip is bound to result in more stuff. Stuff before the trip, stuff during the trip, stuff after the trip. Fun!! Since we are still in the planning phase I'll be talking about planning stuff. Now this does not mean planning about what stuff we will be getting (though Cheryl does that too). This all about the stuff we are acquiring now to facilitate the organized acquisition of more stuff!
So...stuff piece number one was a new GPS. We have a nice little Garmin and I thought it would be fun to get European maps for it. I've tooled around Europe a bit on some of my military adventures and I know that without good navigation our trip to Europe could end up with us in some Croatian prison because we turned right instead of left at the Austrian border with Italy. Carrying detailed paper maps for all the countries we are now visiting would be like lugging around a phone book everywhere we go. This would not do so I pulled up the Garmin website and quickly found that for the price of one simple European map update we could buy our own small non-Euro Zone European Country (or maybe Greece ). Sooo Instead I sniped an auction on eBay and got us a brand new refurbished GPS preloaded with 2010 European maps. Wooohooo. My job was done. Cheryl's job was just beginning. Once the GPS arrived I plugged it in, fired it up, and tossed it to Cheryl. Since I’m the designated driver in Europe she has been assigned designated navigator duties. As Cheryl is the navigator we (we being me) decided it was her job to program in every town, hotel, restaurant, museum, castle, bathroom...etc that we want to visit. It wasn't too bad of a job (for me). After all we do have the big trip book listing everywhere we are going and everything we are doing!
Book you say? What book is this? Well as part of our excessive planning Cheryl decided we needed a trip planning book. This does not mean we went to Barnes and Noble to buy "Europe for Dummies." No No No!! We dummies made our own book. This book started as a thin three ring binder with a few Wikipedia pages of Munich, Neuschwanstein, Salzburg and such. Of course if you read the earlier post you might have noticed our plans changed a few times. Every time the plans changed the book changed and got thicker and thicker. Now our travel book has Wikipedia pages for every town we are stopping in for anything other than gas or a toilette. It has all of our hotels (we went from one to eleven with our many plan changes). It has historical sites, tourist traps, natural wonders, museums, churches, and even bathrooms (Venice apparently doesn't have many public ones). It even has a list of foreign foods so we don't accidentally end up ordering something like "blutworst" in Germany (congealed blood/fat sausage) or "carne de asino" in Italy (donkey meat). I think I'll pass. So anyway, it's a good thing we got the GPS instead of a big pile of maps because now our trip book is in a much thicker zip up three ring binder. It is bigger than a phone book and one phone book per trip is enough when luggage weight counts!
I could use that segue and dive right into the upcoming luggage shopping adventure. I could discuss such exciting things as: Luggage sizes, colors, and weights. Features like wheels, handles, tags, and built in scales. But I think maybe I've rambled enough for one day.
For those of you faithful readers (of these two whole posts): Don't worry! If you hang around until October I will start blogging about actual travel. Until then you'll have to put up with whatever obscure ramble the editor tells me to blog about. Sorry! So until next time: ciao...etc
Editor's Note- Like I could MAKE him write about anything. I can't MAKE him do anything, and any one who knows him knows this is true!
Friday, July 2, 2010
In the beginning...we planned, unplanned, overplanned, and replanned
So...about three months ago as we were sitting on the couch eating bon bons and watching the "Biggest Loser" Cheryl pipes up with something like "lets go to Germany!" Not sure how sweaty fat people inspired that, but what the heck? I like Europe. We had a big trip planned to Disney World in October and Cheryl had done a bit of sneaky research on her own (Cheryl loves to research and plan) and found that Germany didn't look that much more expensive than Disney World. Hahahhaha hahahh haaaaa...ha....ha...uh...yeah..suuure.
Anyway, we love to travel a lot!! I figured Europe is much more travely than Florida so I was willing to listen. The cost of hotels, rental car, airfare, and theme park were actually about the same as two weeks in Munich... if we flew over on the red-eye, stayed in an average quality hotel and rented a clown car. Interesting I thought. So as we tend to do, we threw out one well planned vacation and started working on another one.
Planning is the theme here today....
Plan number one: Lose some weight... damn bon bons were making us look like fat Americans. That wouldn't do in Europe! That plan hasn't changed. I mention this one just to show that we can stick to a plan. By "stick to a plan" I don't necessarily mean we didn't drop an occasional bon bon down the gullet to cover up the indigestion the Big Mac and fries were causing...we just haven't decided to drop the diet!
Plan number two: Reserve all kinds of stuff. Airline tickets, hotels, clown cars...etc. This was easy. I've been to Germany and have a real good idea of the stuff I'd love to show to Cheryl. My time in Germany was in the Rhineland and Bavaria so I recommended Munich as a base station and taking day trips out from there to Salzburg, Neuschwanstein, Rothenburg, Nuremberg, the Black Forest...etc. That was a great plan and airline tickets were purchased, hotel reservations were made for one hotel in Munich for thirteen nights, and a clown car called a VW Polo was reserved (I'm pretty sure the VW Polo fits in the trunk of the Mini Cooper).
Plans were made for breaking!!
Plan three: Munich is just too centrally located. While studying maps for our day trips we found that Trento, Italy was only 200 miles from Munich...Fun!! Italy got added to the trip. And did you know Trento, Italy is only another 130 miles from Venice? Well hell..We HAD to go to Venice! That made for too long of a day trip so a night in Venice was planned. The clown car was too small to hold real luggage so we decided to keep the hotel in Munich, leave the luggage and take an overnight bag to Venice! Good plan I think! Let's change it!!
Plan four: Did you know Strasbourg, France is basically just across the Rhine River from the Black Forest? Well I did and I casually mentioned that to Cheryl. I should have known that females seem to have some romantic ideal of France and while it isn't Paris, Strasbourg is in France and dammit we HAD to go to France!! Well as you might guess That's too long of a day trip so we added a night in Saarbrucken, Germany...We've talked about the clown car so another overnight bag must be used.. Good Plan I think! Lets change it!!
We were now driving 3,000 miles, visiting Germany, Austria (twice), Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, and France. Paying for fifteen hotel nights while sleeping for thirteen and contorting into a clown car while driving 100 miles per hour on the Autobahn. This good plan was starting to get a bit smelly.
Plan fifteen: Throw out all plans and replan the replans! This was the best plan yet. Airline tickets are paid for so that didn't change but every other reservation was canceled. We re-did plan five about ten times but I don't think you want to read about plans 5-14 . So here is plan fifteen. We fly into Munich and rent a much bigger car that will hold all our luggage and a couple large Americans. We then spend the night in Munich...twice. Then everywhere we travel to, we spend the night at a nice small hotel full of local flavor and culture. We will spend the night in Southern Bavaria at the base of the Alps; Innsbruck, Austria near the Swiss and Italian borders; Verona, Italy near Juliet's fictional balcony from Romeo and Juliet; Across the bay from Venice, Italy; downtown in Salzurg, Austria; in the middle-age village of Rothenburg, Germany; outside Strasbourg, France near the mighty Rhine River; at a small guasthaus in the hills of the Black Forrest near Triburg; and Finally back to Munich for our last night in Europe.
Phew that was more work than reserving thirteen nights at the Munich Holiday Inn. But wow we are so much more excited to experience the culture of Europe in the small local type hotels. Plus we actually saved money on the hotels, cut out over 1,000 miles of driving, and probably saved my life by not shoehorning me into a tiny little clown car...wooohooo!!
Plan sixteen: haha kidding! Or not...It's still over three months until we fly way. I think with a little bit of planning we can change this itinerary quite a few more times...I'll let you know...
Auf wiedersehen, ciao, au revoir
ps...Plan number one is still in force!!
Anyway, we love to travel a lot!! I figured Europe is much more travely than Florida so I was willing to listen. The cost of hotels, rental car, airfare, and theme park were actually about the same as two weeks in Munich... if we flew over on the red-eye, stayed in an average quality hotel and rented a clown car. Interesting I thought. So as we tend to do, we threw out one well planned vacation and started working on another one.
Planning is the theme here today....
Plan number one: Lose some weight... damn bon bons were making us look like fat Americans. That wouldn't do in Europe! That plan hasn't changed. I mention this one just to show that we can stick to a plan. By "stick to a plan" I don't necessarily mean we didn't drop an occasional bon bon down the gullet to cover up the indigestion the Big Mac and fries were causing...we just haven't decided to drop the diet!
Plan number two: Reserve all kinds of stuff. Airline tickets, hotels, clown cars...etc. This was easy. I've been to Germany and have a real good idea of the stuff I'd love to show to Cheryl. My time in Germany was in the Rhineland and Bavaria so I recommended Munich as a base station and taking day trips out from there to Salzburg, Neuschwanstein, Rothenburg, Nuremberg, the Black Forest...etc. That was a great plan and airline tickets were purchased, hotel reservations were made for one hotel in Munich for thirteen nights, and a clown car called a VW Polo was reserved (I'm pretty sure the VW Polo fits in the trunk of the Mini Cooper).
Plans were made for breaking!!
Plan three: Munich is just too centrally located. While studying maps for our day trips we found that Trento, Italy was only 200 miles from Munich...Fun!! Italy got added to the trip. And did you know Trento, Italy is only another 130 miles from Venice? Well hell..We HAD to go to Venice! That made for too long of a day trip so a night in Venice was planned. The clown car was too small to hold real luggage so we decided to keep the hotel in Munich, leave the luggage and take an overnight bag to Venice! Good plan I think! Let's change it!!
Plan four: Did you know Strasbourg, France is basically just across the Rhine River from the Black Forest? Well I did and I casually mentioned that to Cheryl. I should have known that females seem to have some romantic ideal of France and while it isn't Paris, Strasbourg is in France and dammit we HAD to go to France!! Well as you might guess That's too long of a day trip so we added a night in Saarbrucken, Germany...We've talked about the clown car so another overnight bag must be used.. Good Plan I think! Lets change it!!
We were now driving 3,000 miles, visiting Germany, Austria (twice), Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, and France. Paying for fifteen hotel nights while sleeping for thirteen and contorting into a clown car while driving 100 miles per hour on the Autobahn. This good plan was starting to get a bit smelly.
Plan fifteen: Throw out all plans and replan the replans! This was the best plan yet. Airline tickets are paid for so that didn't change but every other reservation was canceled. We re-did plan five about ten times but I don't think you want to read about plans 5-14 . So here is plan fifteen. We fly into Munich and rent a much bigger car that will hold all our luggage and a couple large Americans. We then spend the night in Munich...twice. Then everywhere we travel to, we spend the night at a nice small hotel full of local flavor and culture. We will spend the night in Southern Bavaria at the base of the Alps; Innsbruck, Austria near the Swiss and Italian borders; Verona, Italy near Juliet's fictional balcony from Romeo and Juliet; Across the bay from Venice, Italy; downtown in Salzurg, Austria; in the middle-age village of Rothenburg, Germany; outside Strasbourg, France near the mighty Rhine River; at a small guasthaus in the hills of the Black Forrest near Triburg; and Finally back to Munich for our last night in Europe.
Phew that was more work than reserving thirteen nights at the Munich Holiday Inn. But wow we are so much more excited to experience the culture of Europe in the small local type hotels. Plus we actually saved money on the hotels, cut out over 1,000 miles of driving, and probably saved my life by not shoehorning me into a tiny little clown car...wooohooo!!
Plan sixteen: haha kidding! Or not...It's still over three months until we fly way. I think with a little bit of planning we can change this itinerary quite a few more times...I'll let you know...
Auf wiedersehen, ciao, au revoir
ps...Plan number one is still in force!!
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