Boot camp graduation.

A friend of mine pointed out to me that I hadn’t shown any photos or written any adventures on here about when I traveled to Georgia in December for my nephew’s boot camp graduation.  I thought she was crazy, but after looking back through the blog I realized she was right! 

There really weren’t too many adventures, unless you can call absolutely horrible bumper to bumper traffic an adventure, which for me it was because I am NOT used to that where I live. 

I drove 6 hours from where I live to Nashville, Tennessee and stayed overnight then drove another 6 hours the next morning in the final lap of the trip to Columbus, Georgia where Fort Benning is located.  I spent the night in Columbus very close to the base and headed over the next morning for graduation.  Graduation was pretty neat.  The speaker talked a lot about the history of the infantry, and some chosen soldiers put on a “show” of sorts.  Here are some photos of that:

There were flags displayed for every state.

The show or demonstration started by them throwing out some canisters that smoked in different colors.

Then the “strikers” drove in loaded up with soldiers and they ran out and got into formation.

It was a little scary, because they were walking toward US, the audience! 

And then out of the woods appeared the graduates.

There were MANY.  This is a small portion.  I couldn’t get them all in the photos!

My nephew didn’t want to hang around too long after graduation, as you can imagine, but he did let me make a few stops to take photos and we made a visit to the National Infantry Museum on base. 

I think this is fairly new, and it’s beautiful.  We didn’t go through the whole thing because he was just wanting to hit the road, but I saw some really cool stuff. 

There was this beautiful walkway that I saw as soon as I pulled into the parking lot and knew I wanted to get a photo of it.  I’m not sure what the flags represent, perhaps one for every state?  I didn’t count them.  As I was trying to find a place to stand where I could get them all in the frame, I thought it appropriate that the 2 soldiers chose that moment to walk down the path and I like the photo even better because of that.

The walkway is lined with bricks engraved with the names of soldiers.

Inside the building, this is the entrance to one of the most amazing museum displays I have ever seen. 

Behind that wall you enter the exhibit.  There were scenes depicted from 8 different battles from all the different wars we have fought.  There were glass display cases full of different uniforms and gear from the different wars.  The statues used in the scenes were so lifelike it was crazy.  Like this guy:

Sometimes there would be a video playing of the actual war from that scene.  Like this one.  That’s an actual full-size helicopter with the doors open so you could see all the way through, but in the opening of the door in the back there was a “movie screen” for lack of a better word with old Vietnam footage playing on it. 

Lots of history here.  I would have liked to have had more time to go through the exhibit slowly, but that nephew of mine was in a hurry to leave.  ha ha

Then there was the lovely Birmingham, Alabama 5:00 p.m. traffic.  Oh. My. Lord.  If you look closely at the photo below, you’ll see how the line of cars kind of curves to the right and then goes up that big ol’ hill and then curves to the right again.  Yeah, bumper to bumper the whole way.  And yes, I took that photo from the car IN that traffic because I was SITTING STILL.  And let me just tell you…..for some individuals such as myself who live with stupid anxiety disorder, sitting in a car and not being able to move for long periods of time (hell, even short periods of time)….. is NOT GOOD.  But I was okay and made it through, even though that same stretch from Nashville to Georgia that only took 6 hours this time it was 8 hours on the way back from Georgia to Nashville.  Lesson learned.  Time your trip before or after rush hour traffic. 

I also learned that due to my neck troubles (disk spurs in my spine) 6 or 8 hours is TOO LONG of a drive all at once, and I will not be able to do that ever again. 

Of course, after we arrived back at my house we took time for a photo shoot.  I don’t know when I will see this young man again, and he’s going to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan in August or September, so I wanted to document it.  Here he is in his “dress greens.”  Is this “kid” handsome or what? 

This one is my personal favorite:

Please go check out all the photos I took of him in his dress greens on my photography site here.  I couldn’t be more proud of this kid.