Operation Homeward Bound

Today I get into my car and drive. Again. 
Over the past year, I have done a LOT of road tripping.  I drove to and from Vegas countless time, then I took this big trip out here.  It's about 1600 miles from my front door to Fort Knox.  Kind of a long trip.  Like I said before, I have some mixed feelings about heading out, but ultimately, the time to leave was going to come regardless of how I felt about it. 
It has occurred to me that a lot of people just don't do road trips.  Personally, I love them.  I don't mind a flight either, but driving across the country and watching the world change before my eyes on the road that stretches on for miles in any given direction may be one of my very favorite things.  This might be crazy, but I also love all that time to myself.  People think that a drive all alone would be pure torture, but I quite enjoy it. 
Seems how I've done so much distance driving, I learned a few tricks to make travelling down the interstate a little bit easier.  Because let's be honest, you can only listen to your favorite band so many times over the course of a 23 hour drive.  Here's a few things I've learned about making it down the road. 

1// Listen to an audio book. This is a new one for me.  When I decided to drive out to Fort Knox, I knew that music the entire way just might not cut it.  When I went to the store to buy a book, I asked the sale rep at Barnes & Noble for a "book-on-tape" she look at me like I was a Martian.  She looked older than I am, so I 'm not sure why she didn't understand what I meant.  Eventually, we got down to it and she helped me find an audio book.   For my drive back I picked out two Sophie Kinsella books that I can't wait to listen to!

2// Create Playlists of your favorite songs. When you don't have to scroll through your iPod to find the good stuff, life is so much better.  Personally, I like to use Spotify.  I can create all kinds of different playlists with different genres then save them to my phone.  I always find that I'm much happier when I have a variety of different music to listen to. 
3// Bring Snacks and drinks  I have a small cooler that fits nicely on the floor of the passenger seat.  I fill it up with string cheese and apple sauce and I'm much happier while I'm on the road.  That way I never really have to spend extra money on fast food and most of the snacks that are packed with me are things that I can eat while driving.  My go-tos are sunflower seeds, Garlic Butter Ritz Crackers, and the Duoz Chees-itz with Parmesan and Sharp Chedar 
4// Be comfy!  I usually drive in tennis shoes, but I always like to wear shorts or sweats, push my hair back in one of those stretchy head bands and have the chap stick on stand-by.  There is nothing more annoying than a random head ache or some other pain when your blazing down the road and you still have hours left of your journey...
5// Take an Atlas.   You are probably thinking I'm nuts.  Most people don't even know who Rand MacNalley is, but it is nice to have an atlas to look at the route and really see where you're at.  You don't know if you'll always have cell phone service.  Plus, what if that Garmin decides to put you in a lake? You might want to be able to get your wits about you with a map. 

 gif cred    Aside from all these little things, always remember to stop when you get tired, get out if you need to stretch and if you feel like texting and driving, just don't. Track your mileage, check your oil and don't forget to call your momma. 
Today  and tomorrow I'll be tweeting and instagraming my trip across America! Tune into #OpHomewardBound to keep up with me

Getting Down on the Dance Floor in PT Shoes

Well hello there, Tuesday. 
My time here at Fort Knox is coming to a close and I can't help but feel a bit of sadness. I have made so many great memories here, it's going to be hard to say goodbye to all the great people I've met since I've been here. Over the weekend, we did something different than we usually do:  We went to the on-post bar. 
Now that was a trip. It might have been the most hilarious thing ever to watch Soldiers in sweat pants and PT shoes get down on the dance floor.  I thought I had seen it all when I watched Marines in dress blues dance.  I was wrong. 
I only have a few pictures of the night as I left my phone in the van.  These are weird and blurry, but documented the night regardless. As always, I danced. I couldn't even hold still long enough to snap a quality picture. 

I look like a monster from Doctor Who, but I think you can tell that I'm having a good time. Right? Below I am learning a dance that I am clearly terrible at as my friend just laughs endlessly at me.  I just wasn't meant for hip hop.  As hard as I try, I might never be able to pull it off. 

Here we were supposed to be looking at the mirror and not the phone. Pardon my lack of attention to detail. At this point I was already...3 sheet to the wind. 

It was honestly such a fun night. While the bar is about 20-30 guys to every girl, we all still had a great time.  And the fights didn't start to break out until after last call, so the night didn't get ruined by anyone.  I played some Corn Hole with some fun guys I met on the patio and danced the night away.  Basically, I woke up the next day remember that one of the reason I love the Army is great adventures like last weekend.  I can't wait for more like it to come. 

Don't forget about my $50 giveaway!

Why They Say it Like That I Don't Know

For the 4th of July, I went out to Louisville (pronounced LOO-AH-VUL...why they say it like that, I don't know.). Finally! It was...fantastic to say the least. I went out with a handsome young man who showed me around the town. We went out to Bardstown Road and had some pizza (amazing.) and then later drove down to the waterfront for a walk across the River. If this isn't breath taking, I don't know what is...

I took several more pictures out there, but I did this really stupid thing where I deleted one-hundred three photos that I thought would just save to my computer. Wrong. Luckily, I posted this one to Facebook, so it's still in tact.  I suppose I'll just have to go back again so that I can relieve it and take more pictures.  It was really so cool. You walk over the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky and into Jeffersonville, Indiana. They call this whole area "Kentuckiana".  Weird.

So far, I really like this place. Seriously, the more I see, the more I feel a need to go more places. Hopefully I'll get to go out again this weekend.  I have plans to go to a Louisville Bats game today. My work schedule is totally nuts, so I usually don't even know if I have to work until I wake up for that day, but so far, I've made time to make friends and have some fun.

This is another thing that is nuts about this place. A few days ago, I was sitting in the bricks (that's my room in the barracks) and I see flashes of lightening outside my window. Two seconds later, rain is pouring, the wind is howling and the thunder's rolling.

It howled and poured for about 20-30 minutes then was suddenly done. The next morning, there were only a few little wet spots to show for that monster storm the night before.

Basically, Kentucky, while much different from home, is quite an amazing place. I can't wait to see what else it has to offer. If you've ever been here/lived here and have some things in mind that you think/know that I should see, I would be very happy to hear your suggestions. I crave adventure. Feed it to me.

Highly Parenthetical

You guys! I don’t even know where to start.  I love my life so much.  Seriously.

Over the past 3.25 days, I have traveled in my little car across 8 states.  I’ve seen amazing things. I just don’t even know how to describe it.  A huge portion the ride, I just sat there wondering how on earth I was going to describe the experience to my blog.  My conclusion? I honestly don’t even know if I can. 

The only word I can think of to describe it is simply euphoric.  

It was like every state line I crossed, I felt as if I was entering into a new world.  And it was a whole different world each time.  As I was driving through the Midwest, it was mostly farm land that I was driving through, and when I could, I tuned into the radio to try and get a real piece of what the place was like. 

I just have all this wanderlust inside of me, and this little 1600 mile jaunt has only just intensified the lust in my heart.

**

Tragically, I have as much internet on this lap top as I do on an etcha-sketch (read “zero”) so I’m currently writing drafts as word documents for the time when I have the chance to hit the library.  I can’t even really use the internet on my phone.  I’ve used up 90% of my data (as of 06/26) and my billing period ends the 29^th. ..I can’t even Tinder it up. But anyway…

(update:  Since writing this post, I bought a little bit more data so I now have a "hotspot".  It will be used to post all my entries)

So far I haven’t really done much on Fort Knox.  I checked in, got a lovely (read “super crappy”) barracks room, did some other administrative sort of things, and now here I am. 

Let's not even talk about how bad my bed looks...don't worry, we'll never get inspected. But seriously, I feel like I'm in prison. does my room not look like Piper's cube on Orange is the new black?

For some reason lately, I’ve been feeling very…adventurous.  I can’t explain why.  If I knew, I promise I would divulge the secret, but seems how I’m not even telling myself, I probably can’t tell you either.  Just know that for the first time in a long time, I’m so outrageously happy with my life situation.  Sure, there are things that could be better, but I’ve chosen to, as Augustus Waters would say “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up” (John Greene “The Fault in Our Stars”) And I quite like it that way.

Well, I suppose that is all  for now, I shall report in as soon as I can, like I said, my computer may as well be a Magna-Doodle…so you’ll see posts when you see em. I’m going to work at cranking them out when I can so that they’re seen as often as possible!

So until I have a few posts stacked up and ready to go, I'm just going to stare into these lovely eastern sunsets and work to thoroughly enjoy my time here. 

Bye for now!