7 States in 3 Days (Part II) – Delaware Returns

We drove briefly through Delaware on I-95, another state neither of us had visited. Nothing too memorable.

We passed through Baltimore (including a portion of the freeway that goes under the harbor. I’ve driven in an underwater tunnel like this before in Norfolk, Virginia and have no desire to ever do it again) and, after the obligatory Capital Beltway traffic, we got past Washington, DC and made it to Quantico. [The tunnel was pretty impressive – at least a mile. We were driving at on a downward slope for a quite a while before it finally leveled out. It was as least as cool as driving through the mountains on the Pennsylvania toll road. The road signs leading up to them all were great. “Remove Sunglasses”, “Headlights On”, and “Stay in Lane”. On the toll road the tunnels were followed by another sign, “Headlights ???”. Did I mention that I loved driving the Pennsylvania toll road?]

I have not cut my hair in a few weeks, since the beginning of my last week before terminal leave. I felt perpetually judged while in and around the heart of Marineistan.

We went to Quantico because I needed to take final exams for my grad courses. I am doing my MS through Florida Institute of Technology, and they have an extension office at the Quantico base education center. I needed someone to proctor my exams and, since we wanted to be around the Washington region anyways to catch a space-a flight to Europe, it made sense to arrange it with the staff there. So we got up on Monday, Lynnae dropped me off at the education center, and I proceeded with the educational battle royale. I emerged victorious after taking two back-to-back graduate-level final exams (well, they’re complete – we’ll see who won when I get my course grades).

[Sunday night – my roller suitcase broke. Fortunately we were still in the States and also near a base. So while Ralph was taking his exams, I bought another suitcase at the PX, did laundry and repacked our suitcases and readied the car for our travels abroad on the off chance we’d get out tonight.]

All this time, Lynnae and I had been repeatedly calling each military passenger terminal (military airport) in the area – specifically, Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Andrews Air Force Base (in Maryland, just outside Washington, DC – Air Force One lives there), and Dover Air Force Base (Delaware) – to try to gauge our chances of getting out on space-available flights. For our non-military readers, the military operates a lot of flights, mostly of cargo aircraft, to move equipment and personnel as needed for operational requirements. When there is room left on one of these aircraft, they can cram in hangers-on for free or very low cost to the flyer bumming a ride.

As a service to people wanting to fly space-a, the larger passenger terminals have phone lines dedicated to playing a recording of flight information – approximate departure times, destinations, and how many seats they expect to have available after all mission-related cargo and personnel are accounted for. Some of them also update this information on a Facebook page.

For security reasons, they only release a day or two’s information at a time on these flight recordings, and even then the information is pretty limited and unreliable. You could always just show up at the passenger terminal and get more information but if, like us, you don’t want to spend eight hours a day driving back and forth between passenger terminals, it’s a bit of a gamble on whether or not the information is correct.

Because we had nothing else we had to do in Quantico, we headed north, toward our three likely departure terminals. Lynnae drove while I worked the phones, hoping the passenger terminals had updated their flight recording information since the morning, to see how many seats would be available in upcoming flights. No such luck, the recordings were the same ones we’d heard all day, and they all said ‘zero tentative seats’, i.e., no room for you. But tentative means just that so, after some quick discussion we decided to head toward the mean streets of Dover, Delaware to try to get on a Germany-bound flight that very night. The flight recording says there’s zero tentative seats, and we will only get there with 15 minutes to spare, if we can even get on the flight, so why not try!

We drove east from the Capital Beltway on US-50 toward Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge linking Annapolis, Maryland with the Eastern Shore. I do not like driving on very tall, very long, winding bridges either. [It’s funny – we had just switched drivers and it wouldn’t have bothered me. Whoops!]

Once we got into Delaware the freeways turned into country roads, and our pace slowed considerably. [Especially when we ended up behind a slow moving truck swerving all over the road. We assumed the driver was drunk or exceedingly sleep deprived. The trucks swerves were too erratic to predict so we weren’t comfortable trying to pass. We did call it in ad fortunately for all concerned s/he turned off into a housing development after a very long five miles or so.] But, we made it to the passenger terminal right when we wanted to be there, not sure if there would even be a spot for us – thankfully two hotels were right outside the base, if we needed them.

Victory! There were 19 spots available and about 25 people waiting to get on the flight. We signed in with the front desk [We weren’t allowed to park long term outside the terminal, so after we checked in we unloaded the car, Ralph drove it to the long term lot about a half mile away, and then ran back] and, a half-hour later, they called our name, took our baggage, and gave us a boarding pass.

The flight was on a C-17 which is an extremely large, wide-bodied military cargo aircraft. It was Lynnae’s first time on a military aircraft, and she was very excited.  Yes, that’s a multi-ton tactical vehicle chained down in front of us.
[I’m not going to lie it was pretty cool. We had to take a bus to the plane about 100m away because walking isn’t allowed on the runway. The plane was huge inside. We walked up the steps and were confronted with a huge tractor-like vehicle secured to the floor. Our seats were jumpseats along the wall. Beyond the vehicle there were boxes and crates – also our luggage. The seats themselves were comfortable enough. There were no armrests but as we all faced the aisle between us and the tractor there was virtually unlimited leg room which was great. Unfortunately, there was also water slowly dripping from somewhere above me – just me and no one else as far as I could tell. It was kind of irksome but during takeoff – everyone was showered with some water from above and then once we were airborne all of the drips ceased. Thank goodness.]

[It was also ridiculously loud – even with ear plugs. If any of you are interested I can send you a short video of the plane and you’ll hear how loud it really was.]

[It was hot while we were sitting on the runway but once we were in flight it was quite cold. People stretched out on the floor to sleep – which was nice, but it really only worked if you had two blankets; one for underneath you and one to cover you. Ralph and I had only three blankets between us. He was using two because he wanted to sleep before I did. I tried to wedge myself between the tractor and Ralph to share one of his blankets but in his sleep he strong-armed me away. So much for love! I ended up curled up my blanket, Ruth-like at his feet. For the first time in a long while I felt warm and I fell asleep only to be awakened about an hour later by Ralph poking my back with his feet. After elbowing him into submission, I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn’t get the blanket arranged in any sort of way to keep me warm. I gave up and returned to my seat to read.]

This is the plane with the night-light on.  I slept with my head perilously close to the wheel of a tied-down tactical vehicle. I felt like a safety brief waiting to happen.

As I type this on my laptop, we are close to touching down in Spangdahlem, Germany. Google Maps tells me it is near Luxembourg which, I learned by playing Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego? as a child, is a Grand Duchy. Perhaps we will visit it.

Now you’re up to speed, more to come surely!
[We’ll try to update more frequently so these posts aren’t so long.]

7 States in 3 Days (Part I)

Ralph here – Quite a lot has happened in the last few days!  Since I last posted, we made it to Philadelphia with little trouble besides a traffic jam outside the city [Lynnae here again – the traffic jam was caused by what appeared to be a fatal accident in the middle lane.  It took a while to clear the freeway.  During this time we were literally parked on the road.]  Our time there was short, but we did get to see the main tourist things.

[We arrived Saturday night around supper time.  We checked into our hotel and headed into the city for Philly cheesesteaks.  Not many touristy things are open by that time of night so our options were limited.  As a result…]

On Saturday night we went on a Philadelphia ghost tour.  Apparently there are several such tours operating in Philadelphia.  It was OK, some interesting stories about the city’s past.

[I thought the Ghost Tour was quite interesting.  It was a walking tour so we walked to different locations around the city where ghosts had been sighted – most were ghosts from the 1700-1800’s and had been seen by more than one person.  Apparently, Benjamin Franklin is seen in many different locations around the city.  Our guide was knowledgeable about the background of the city in general and more specifically of the stories she was telling.  A lot of historical information was given to provide the backdrop for the ghost stories.  I don’t think our guide believes in ghosts herself but she was reasonably convincing]

When we got back to the hotel, we researched Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod congregations in the area that we could visit on Sunday morning.  There were a fair number in the area, but very few had websites so we could know when the service started.  One – Martin Luther Chapel in Pennsauken, New Jersey – had a service at 10:30 and was fairly close.  Additionally, neither Lynnae nor I had ever been to New Jersey so this would give us a good reason to go.

After marveling at all the full-service gasoline stations, we eventually found the church with record-low tardiness.  [Ralph had never seen a full-service gas station before.  I was more surprised by the lack of turns available.  The road we were on did not allow left turns at any point and did not allow right turns at intersections with lights.  I had to take a right turn at an intersection without a light and then drive  parallel to the main street until there was an intersection with lights so I could cross the street.  It was vexing.]  The congregation was warm and inviting to us as visitors, something that unfortunately I cannot say has happened at all the churches I’ve visited.  We explained we were tourists, and then we headed back to Philadelphia for more tourism.

The Ben Franklin Bridge from NJ to Philadelphia. Free headed eastbound out of Philadelphia across the Delaware River, but once you get a taste of Jersey, you have to pay to leave.

[We decided we preferred this area of Philly at night.  There were fewer obvious tourists and more locals.  It was much less crowded on the streets and was easier to get close to what you wanted to see.  We were glad we went back to see some of the things in daylight.  However, we were on a pretty tight schedule so we didn’t want to wait in any lines so all of our photos are of outside things.]

Independence Hall

Liberty Bell (didn’t want to wait behind no-kidding several hundred other tourists to get inside, thankfully it’s visible from the outside of the building)

Philadelphia skyline from I-95.  It was my first time driving or riding on a double-decker freeway, where one direction of traffic sits atop the other.

A necessary part of any Marine’s trip to Philadelphia, the site of Tun Tavern! OK, well, at least according to Wikipedia, the real Tun Tavern burned down and the site was later covered by the freeway, but this is pretty close.  We ate cheesesteaks less than a block from this site, and a couple tables away were a few guys with motivated haircuts.  I’m assuming they were on a pilgrimage.

While waiting at a crosswalk in Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon, we heard a voice to our right.  “You were in my church this morning!”  The pastor was in his clerical collar, we can only assume to make a visit to a hospital across the street.  We talked for a couple minutes, and headed off.  Apparently he has a good eye for remembering new faces.

Overall, Philadelphia – at least the areas we visited – had a unique warm and vibrant feel to it and, despite the fact that you may at any time be ran flat by a taxi or skimmed by a bohemian on a fixie bike, felt very inviting.  [Philadelphia was pretty pedestrian friendly – at least the touristy parts we were in.  I did not share Ralph’s concerns.]  If we weren’t on a tighter schedule we would have liked to stay longer.  I recommend it for a long-weekend driving trip for anybody in Indianapolis or further east.  You can leave in the morning and get there in time for dinner.

We only spent a couple hours in Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon because we had a long drive to Quantico ahead of us.  So with the Rocky theme in my head, Lynnae drove us south on I-95.

It begins…

Hello and welcome to our travel blog for our post-Marine Corps European vacation.  I (Ralph) am typing this as Lynnae drives our car back onto I-70 in West Virginia, where we had stopped for lunch.  Our journey so far has lasted eight days.  My last workday as an active-duty Marine officer was Friday, July 13th, capping just over six years on active duty.  We picked up the U-Haul truck and started loading it with assistance from my friends Charlie and Paul.  We loaded the truck to capacity late Friday night but unfortunately, we rented too small of a truck and had to leave some of our stuff in Indy.

On the morning of Saturday, July 14, we had breakfast at Lincoln Square Pancake House on 56th Street (highly recommend it) and began the long drive to Minneapolis.  Lynnae drove one of our cars and I drove the big truck.  The drive was unremarkable, and the truck was easy to drive, even when loaded down.  We got to Lynnae’s mom’s house at about 10:30 pm with no trouble.

The next day, with help from some of Lynnae’s family, we unloaded our truck into a storage unit.  We spent a few days in Minneapolis, during which I met with my new Commanding Officer as a reservist, and with a retired Marine officer who works at Medtronic (a medical device company that is headquartered there) and learned more about the company.  On Wednesday night, my mother-in-law drove us to the Megabus drop-off point and we took the overnight bus to Chicago,
quickly followed by another bus from Chicago to downtown Indy, finishing with an IndyGo bus from downtown to the federal building in Lawrence, a short walk away from our house. 

On the Megabus

It was only 15 hours from start to finish but felt much much longer, even with the ability to sleep en route.

Upon our return we got back to work, moving the remainder of our belongings into a storage unit in Indianapolis, cleaning the house, and finally making our getaway yesterday evening.  We spent the night outside Columbus, Ohio and are now, as I type this, traveling through west Pennsylvania. 

Columbus, OH from I-70

[Lynnae here – The Pennsylvania toll road we are traveling on is great.  It’s not that expensive considering we’re traveling it for hundreds of miles and it’s interesting driving with hills, curves, tunnels, a reasonable speed limit, and great scenery.  The shoulders are pretty wide and every mile or so there’s a emergency parking on the side of the road.  The oasis stops are quite nice.  Our first one had a farmer’s market and we’ve only seen one police car, he was responding to a motorist in distress.  Great driving!] 

Our goal is to see Philadelphia for a day or so, then we need to go to Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia so I can take two of my final exams on Monday.  If things go well, we will get on a space-A flight to Europe as early as Tuesday.