Road Trip Day 1

New Mexico, a place of desert beauty, annoying contour-following mountain roads, and some cool weather if you like watching clouds form literally next to you because you're high enough elevation.

Thanksgiving Day was a semi-eventful one for Task Force Bailey (our knick-name for the four of us hanging out together this pass). Unlike the others, I slept in until almost 1000 hrs. While passing through Alamogordo the night before we noticed that the city zoo was open Thursday so around 1130 hrs. we headed in that direction for something to do. The zoo was much smaller than most, even smaller than Blank Park in Des Moines, but was pretty cool all the same. We noticed indicators that the zoo is expanding and I hope that they do. The cages reminded me a bit of the old Beaver Park in Cedar Rapids, except that the bears had actual grass and dirt in their's. Seeing the bears reminded me of my Great Uncle Leo who always used to joke with my dad that he'd box with the ones in CR every morning when he was in town.

After the zoo we learned a very important lesson about planning fun on a holiday: always make sure that you know where an open food-source is. We spent over an hour trying to find a place to eat at. Fortunately Denny's doesn't care about their employees having family time on the holidays and I was able to enjoy a wonderful 13 oz. T-bone steak.

Before departing we all took the time to call loved ones back home. Along with my parents and kids I was able to have a good conversation with my grandmother. Before she even mentioned it I could tell by how she was talking I helped make her Thanksgiving a good one. I definitely need to go down to Cedar Rapids to visit her again when I get back from overseas. Coincidentally she brought up a lot of the same memories of the holidays that I had mentioned the post before this one. Overall we all had a really fun day. No schedules, no training, no officers.

I took a good number of pictures while at the zoo and I learned that while my Canon is a good little camera, it doesn't come close to satisfying my needs for photo taking. I'm half tempted to have my parents send me my Nikon from home for this deployment. If I was able to get Camera Armour for it I'd have it sent in a heartbeat. As it stands, one of the first things I'm going to do when I get home (before I even modify the Jeep some more) I'm purchasing the new dSLR body from Nikon that shots HD video (and has microphone inputs). I figure in a year the price should be a lot less than the $5,000 it costs now. Another good thing will be that being a Nikon all my current lenses will work on it...that will save me around $3,000 (just don't tell my parents I have that much wrapped up on camera glass. I don't want my Dad to get glass envy again...although acquiring his collection would be cool).

So, here's some of the pix that I took at the zoo. I apologize for the quality not being on-par with previous photos I've posted. The Canon doesn't fool as easily for focusing through fences/cages as my Nikon does.

And here's a short video we took while driving down the highway:

As our pass continues I'll make sure to post more of what Task Force Bailey has been up to...well, Chain of Command approved activities that is ;)

Until then, everyone keep safe.

~~~