Arriving at Naval Graduation Location–Great Lakes, IL

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

We arrived in Chicago almost exactly 48 hours from the time our plane took off again back to Seattle.  It’s been a very, very busy 2 days.  Actually, that’s even a gross understatement.  The beginning of this trip started even earlier than that as mentioned in the post just prior to our departure as the wake up call had us getting out of bed close to 1 AM on Thursday morning.  I know that’s early and no plane I want to be on departs at that time.  However, we had to get up, get dressed and then take about a 120 mile drive from our parked motorhome to the Seattle airport.  Did we sleep on the plane?  Of course we did not.  We just didn’t realize how busy the rest of the day would be.  It was busy.

Our plane arrived about 4 hours later in Chicago.  Then, it was to the Hertz car rental bus to pick up a bummer of a rental vehicle.  I used to rent from Hertz lots when I worked so became part of the Hertz Gold program.  It’s just easy to rent from Hertz now because I don’t have to go to counters or stand in lines.  It’s all processed and ready with the car waiting.  I’m sure most know how it works.  Usually I get a fantastic car with upgrades even though I always book the lowest vehicle listed.  The deal is that most locations don’t have compacts in stock because no one wants one.  This time the free upgrade was a van that was backed into the parking spot.  I thought that was great and instead of walking around the car and checking it out like I used to do,  we just took off.  Not only did the car rattle, growl, and shake, it also had dents and marks all over it.  Am I exaggerating?  I can’t say that I am too much.  We called Hertz at the airport and left a message for them to return the call within an hour.  The next time we talked to Hertz was when we returned the vehicle Saturday morning at the airport.  In other words, they didn’t bother to call back.  I won’t forget to check it out next time.

 

From the airport we drove north to Great Lakes, Illinois and home of the Navy training facility.  It only took us about 45 minutes and thank goodness it wasn’t during rush hour.  We probably would have been a few hours later.  However, traffic was good.  Once we had checked in at the Navy Lodge which was close to the location where graduation would be held for the recruits, we were off to the airport in Milwaukee, WI to pick up Lee and Sabrina who had flown on Southwest Airlines.  That was another 50 plus miles north.  No, they didn’t fly in with us on American.  Remember, we mostly fly standby.  However, this time the flight was pretty full and we weren’t sure they would make it on a stand-by basis flying at the level of priority they would have to fly.  There is no way they wanted to miss a flight and miss Justin’s graduation.

Needless to say, by the time we had driven to Seattle, flown to Chicago, driven to  Milwaukee and driven back to Great Lakes, we were all extremely tired.  However, we still wanted to figure out how to get into the base the following morning for the ceremonies.  We had to do a little driving around and scoping out the path for the next day.

Then, to the Exchange to purchase graduation souvenirs and off to dinner at Flanagan’s.  Again, we were exhausted.  Friday morning was going to be another early one.  The gates at the base opened at 6:30 (aka 4:30 our current daylight time).  We had been warned to be in line early even though the ceremony didn’t start until 9:00.

There was no TV that night, no computer that night and just a shower and hop into bed.  We figured Friday would be another very busy day.