The Journey Continues....With Alligators

Having left my kind and generous family behind in Atlanta after a week-long stay, we have now resumed our travels south, enveloped in a post-holiday glow (and perhaps an extra pound around the middle).

At any rate, we successfully made it to Fort Benning, Georgia, an army base where Mary and her family lived while her father was in Viet Nam for two tours. Fort Benning is an interesting place which is home to the controversial School of the Americas, currently known as The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), where many notorious Latin American dictators and soldiers have apparently received a rather unsavory education.

Controversy aside, we took photos and videos of several of Mary's former homes on the base, and Mary was able to reminisce about a special and poignant period of her childhood, and perhaps she will grace this blog with some of those photos and reminiscences in the days to come.

For tonight, we are cozily ensconced in an army campground in Fort Mitchell, Alabama, not five miles from Fort Benning.

The above photograph depicts a sign posted on a dock by the river where we took Tina for a sunset stroll as an almost Blue Moon rose in a crystal-clear sky over the silent river. (New Years Eve will indeed be a blue moon---the 2nd full moon of the month.) We did not see any alligators, but pictured them lurking lazily in the muddy waters below our feet. Creepy but exciting!

Stay tuned for more updates, and perhaps an eloquent word from Mary about her return to this landmark of her itinerant and remarkable childhood.

----Keith