Indescribable

Last night I experienced something that I thought was really cool, so I thought I would share it with everyone.

Let me begin by saying that the night sky here is awesome. There are no city lights anywhere and its never really cloudy so at night you can look up and see nothing but stars everywhere. Last night I was out working and I had a set of night vision goggles with me as part of my job. Now if you think looking at the night sky with just the naked eye is amazing, imagine tripling the amount of stars you see and that’s about what it looks like through NVG’s. There are stars everywhere.

So I’m out working, or you could say messing around with the NVG’s, and listening to music when the song “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin happened to come on. For those of you unfamiliar with the song the chorus says

“Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God”

As I’m sitting there listening and looking at all the stars and thinking about how ironic it was that that song came on. I saw a shooting star go across the sky. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks here lately work wise and it was a really cool way to end my shift. I know it was God’s way of revealing himself to me in that moment and saying “Hey, I’m right here. I’m still watching over you and protecting you.”

Sorry for the poor picture quality. Taking pictures through NVG’s with an iPhone is almost impossible. All the white dots you see are stars. Also I would like to say thank you to everyone who was been praying for me for the last almost 7 months now. It means a lot to me to know how many people back home are sending prayers my way. Thank you so much.

My New Hobby

I don’t know how many of you know this, but I recently got a new hobby. I joined a animal rescue group a few weeks ago and volunteered to help save the African Antelope.

Last week was the first time I was able to see some action. Fortunately my efforts were captured on video, which I hope you all enjoy.

It is a very tiring thing to do but the feeling of accomplishment is very rewarding. Still only one rescue a day is all I can handle.

Would You Be Paranoid?

 

I saw this online today and thought it was hilarious.

Land Between The Lakes

This weekend I went down to Land Between the Lakes recreation area. It is national forest nearby the Cumberland river. It has a lot of trails to drive on along with lots of other things to do like camp and fish.

This is the Great Western Furnace. It was built in 1854 and was used to make iron. However it was closed in 1856 due to a lack of funds to keep it running, and an uprising from the slaves who worked on it.

 

 

 

      

Can you see the hawk sitting in the middle of this picture?

 

 

 

 

And what about the Blue Heron standing on the ice in the middle of the lake?

 

 

 

 

This Heron was just waiting for dinner on the side of the Cumberland river.

 

 

 

 

Fort Donelson

A few weekends ago I took a drive out to the Fort Donelson National Battlefield. It is the site of a civil war battle along the Cumberland River. It was really interesting to drive around and learn about the battle and how decisive of a victory it was for the Union at the time.

It was a three day battle which started on February 13th, 14th, and 15h, 1862. It was a Confederate camp that the Union attacked due to its location as being a vital supply route. The Union was losing the battle for most of the first two days, but won due to some poor decisions from the Confederates generals.

There was cannons set up all over occupying the same positions they were in 148 years ago.

The bottom four photos are all of the battery overlooking the Cumberland river.

This is the valley where the fort was along with a replica of a cabin were the Confederate soldiers lived.

I thought this was interesting. It is a quote from Union General Smith. He said this as he charged towards the retreating Confederates.

After I finished walking around the battlefield, I drove over the the national cemetery. I found it interesting that no Confederate soldier was buried here because they fought against the Untied States. Only Union soldiers were buried here.

This is the Dover Hotel. It was the place where the General Grant met with Confederate General Buckner to discuss the terms of the south's surrender.

It was a very interesting place to visit and I learned a lot. If you’re ever in area its a neat place to check out.

Fort Campbell, My New Home

So as most everyone knows the army recently decided that it needed me at Fort Campbell, KY more then it needed me at Fort Carson, CO. I left Fort Carson and the 1-2 “Gunfighters”at the end of September. I was ready to leave the unit, however I was sad to have to say goodbye to all the good friends I had there. Hopefully some day down the road I’ll see some of them again.

I got to Fort Campbell the second week of October and began the long process of doing all the in-processing you have to do when you move to another duty station. Mostly this involves things like dental and medical exams and making sure all your paper work is correct.

After all that is done I got assigned to my new unit, which is part of the 101st Airborne Division.  This will be my new home for most likely the next three years. I am doing the same thing that I did at Fort Carson, just with new faces and new aircraft.

On another note, most of you may know already that I will be deploying next February. I don’t know any details besides that for now.

Skydiving

Last Saturday and some guys from my shop and I decided to go skydiving. We did a static line jump. This is different from what you normally see with people free falling for several seconds before the chute deploys. Instead you jump out by your self with a line connected to the aircraft which pulls the chute out. If you’ve ever seen Band of Brothers, its the same thing.

We started the day by going through a few hours of classes on proper technique and making sure your parachute is good and flyable once it is deployed. This is me learning the proper way to exit the aircraft.

I was the first one to jump from my aircraft. There's only room for 3 jumpers plus your jumpmaster in the aircraft. So I was sitting in the doorway just like the above picture until i jumped. Once you get to altitude, we jumped at 3500 ft, the door opens and the jumpmaster says GO! You reach behind you and grab the orange painted section of wing. Then set your feet on the little step above the wheel and slide out to the yellow section of wing. At this point your feet are dangling and your just holding on.

This is right above the yellow section. Your supposed to look at it right before you let go. By doing this it puts your body into and arch which makes your parachute deploy properly. You only fall for about 5 seconds before the parachute deploys. Then its about a 2-3 minute flight to the ground.

Here I am soaring to the ground.

 

 

 

 

This is a picture I took of Wilson. I think it turned out awesome.

 

 

 

And this is the guys from my plane. From left to right its Peirce, out jumpmaster Tommy, Marchese, and me.

 

This is what they gave before we left. It was a really fun thing to do and I will defiantly do it again.

NTC

Here’s a video I made of my of my pictures from NTC.

Back Again

For those of you who don’t know, I spent the last month in the Mojave desert. My battalion was once again at the National Training Center located at Fort Irwin, CA. I’ll be posting some pictures I took during the month tomorrow.

Right now all you get is this picture I took of one of our pilots. O wait, that’s not a pilot, that’s a baby. Sorry I got confused by the close resemblance to some of our pilots. And the fact that he could probably fly better then some of them.

Shelf Road

After we left Red Canyon Park we continued on Shelf Road. So these are just some pictures I took on the main scenic portion of the road. There’s a few of them because I liked them all and couldn’t narrow it down to less then I already have.

   

  

   

The next picture is probably one of my favorites. As we neared the end of the trail we came around a corner and saw the mountains in the distance through the trees. The view was amazing and pretty much took your breath away.

Shelf Road ends in the little town of Cripple Creek. This is looking back down at the town as you leave.

The road back to the springs is also very scenic but because it is a pretty narrow winding road there isn’t really room to pull over and take pictures. We did pass this unused tunnel and stopped to get a picture of it. It’s called the Watershed tunnel. It’s locked up so you cant drive through but it looked cool from the road.