jrtc adventure day 9

Tonight, I ate alligator and frog legs.  Yes, I am in Louisiana, I guess that's what you do here.  The alligator wasn't bad, very chicken-y.  On the other hand, I can't say I'll be eating frog legs again anytime soon.  We (combat camera folks & me) hit up a local cajun restaurant down the street from the hotel we're in.  None of us were terribly impressed, but we had a great time none the less.  We tried out the local menu and the local beer, and threw peanut shells at each other in the process.  This evening's activities also involved me and Jimmy diving quickly onto the pavement after the "someone lay down in front" command while taking a group photo in front of the restaurant.  I'm so glad that even Combat Camera takes touristy photos.

Today was a pretty calm day.  I spent this morning driving around the rest of the exercise grounds and checking out where the Army has been playing for the last couple of weeks.  I also got to visit the Combat Support Hospital where I saw how the Army does their medical stuff.  It was a very large operation for sure.  According to one of the staff there, she said the CSH at the exercise was larger than the one she worked in while deployed, which I found pretty interesting.  After stopping at the CSH, I headed out to Leesville, La. with some of the Combat Camera folks to watch two F-15 Strike Eagles practicing some combat air support techniques.

Since the exercise is winding down, at least for the Air Force portion that I'm involved in, we left the Aeromedical Evacuation office at a relatively early time, around 3:30 p.m.  Once we returned to the hotel after a bathing suit run to Wal-Mart, me and Major Riley took in some sun, enjoyed a cold beer, and read silly gossip magazines by the pool.  We also ran into a lot of the other folks who are working the exercise, at least from an AE standpoint, at the pool.  I forgot how many rooms our team is actually taking up in this small hotel.  I'd venture to guess that 75% of this hotel is filled by someone who in some way is attached to the exercise.  Soon after the pool we were swept off to try our luck with the cajun food, and we all know how that turned out.  Hopefully, tomorrow's home-cooked cajun meal for our end-of-exercise social will be much better.

And now it's time for bed.  My eyes are officially closing for the evening and without editing this blog post -- deal with it.