Weekends on the lake... spent a nice afternoon decompressing at one of the state parks here in Virginia. Bear Creek State Park. It was a beautiful day out. The trails were pretty flat but the cabins.. the CABINS here are amazing. They are what my tax bracket call homes.

View Larger Map

2549 miles. 7 days, lots of friends and family to visit. Only 5 weeks to go... I can't wait!

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR THE SUMMER
I am finally in the last phase of my school here in Southern Virginia. I am both anxious and bittersweet about heading home to Arizona. The end of this will mark the beginning of a heinously crazy time of my life. I return to a high-speed no-time for relaxing period... well almost.

I return for a few weeks then have a week of automation (computer systems) training. After that I am taking a real vacation. Australia!!! Woo Hooo. This will be my first time 'down under'. Then I return to continue trying to find new tenants for my rental properties. A couple weeks later I start the push for training for my troops until we deploy to Southwest Asia in the fall. Then return in the fall of 2010.

I dont know what I am doing with the pups. That is my biggest angst about the entire deployment. I came back from school for Presidents' day weekend and they were so PISSED that I left again. Plus I find myself reallly missing them.

More to follow....

My home for 8 hours. What was to be a 2.5 hour ride turned with the snow. 6-8". Apparently snow and trains don't fare too well. The first snag was getting stuck behind a broken train. The one that left 2 hours before ours. I'm glad I was not on that one. Next was the cargo train derailed in front of us. They backed ours up to bus us in. The engineers changed the plan after an hour and squeaked by the derailed one. Then we backed up to a station. Oh but wait some trees fell on the tracks. They got some guys out with chainsaws and cleared those. Now I am moving forward, bit they need to change tracks again. They are changing them manually, so i think that will add 1/2 hour again to this trip. Once I get to Richmond Station I still have to drive 30 min in this weather. I hope my car is not plowed in. At least they closed post tomorrow so I have no school. What a long trip this is.