Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee - All this week -

Some weeks crawl along and we find daily activities to keep us busy.  Other weeks are just too busy to even worry about making plans.  They’ve all been made for us.  Such was the last week of August. 

Sandi’s official Navy boot camp graduation picture

The week started off with all the gunk Terry had to get down him for his scheduled colonoscopy and upper GI.   For about 10 hours I didn’t see much of him.  I’m sure there’s no need to mention where he was.  Tuesday, we were up way before dawn. From where we were in Washington, it was a long, slow trip to the hospital on the other side of Portland. This was planned  during the morning work traffic, of course  The next few hours were spent in waiting for results.  The last time we went through this the news wasn’t so good.  Eventually, it was over and everything seemed to be okay but we are still need the biopsy results on two small polypus.  We’re thinking they are benign because the administrator thought they were.  So, for us, this was good news.

Next, we found ourselves shutting down our cabin and getting ready for another before dawn departure.  This time we were heading to the airport for our trip to Great Lakes, IL and Sandi’s boot camp graduation.  Flights went just as planned but weather wasn’t cooperating.  Upon landing in Chicago, we were greeted with a tremendous rain storm. 

What’d we ever do without GPS units?  From Chicago we rented a car and drove in that heavy rain to Great Lakes where we had reservations for a couple of nights.

Tammi, Robert and Mike had later flights and didn’t arrive until about 11:00 PM for a short sleep.  We knew the gates opened for graduation at 6:30 AM but also knew the lineup started about 5:30.  We were there then even though the graduation ceremony didn’t start until 9:00.

The graduation ceremony was phenomenal.  It’s so exciting to watch the whole event.  Eventually Sandi's division made it to center of the event.  There she was … no contact lenses allowed during boot camp .. carrying a flag and behind the tallest sailor in their group! 

Most of the new sailors had liberty that day until 8:30 PM.  We kept Sandi busy.

She was so happy to get her iPad back, eat at a Cracker Barrel and get a new cell phone ---- in the two months she was away at boot camp she had forgotten the password on her old one.

 

Notice the time on her iPad.  She originally had the count down to her boot camp departure date.  Now it’s letting her know exactly how long boot camp had lasted.

Sandi was scheduled to depart the base at 3:00 AM Saturday morning for Chicago O’Hare even though her flight didn’t leave for Pensacola until 6:00 that night.  Why so early?  Well, so she could sit around and wait.  You know how that works.  By 5:00 AM we were also on our way to the airport even though our plane didn’t leave until 1:30.  After all, we knew we’d have a few more hours to spend with her before she was on her way to Florida. Even young ones can snowbird in that state!

Look at the hand cut ship! Isn’t that amazing?  Aunt Sabrina made the card for her.

Some little kids were even dressed up like future sailors. So cute.

When we arrived in Nashville, it was pouring down rain, again.  I’m thinking we brought the rain with us.  Our first plan of action was to pick up an awful Ford Fiesta from Hertz (I hate those cars).  We had scheduled transportation from Nashville the next evening to take us where our RV and vehicle were stored.   We had one full day to kill which meant one more hotel for the night.  The next time was spent around Nashville with a little detour to Kentucky.  Why not?  We were close. 

Sunday evening, we arrived just as planned.  Jerry and Janice had also pulled in that day from Texas.   Talk was short as we were all pretty zonked.

‘Tis life on the road.