Fort Rucker and Dothan, AL: August 14-16, 2015 - In Which I Visit My Dear Friend Clayford, Part II

Phew. Wow. This one's gonna be kind of a drop off a cliff after my June/July. Not nearly as exciting or interesting as all those exotic European locales. Oh well. There's still a tale to tell.

When we last visited my Dear Friend Clayford - as you'll no doubt remember, being such careful and zealous readers of this fair blog - he was living in Louisville going to grad school. Well, ol' Clayford done graduated, and he got himself a fancy job with the US army. He now lives on base, or uh, on post - not sure if there's a difference - at Fort Rucker in Alabama.

Now I've never actually been on an army base before, and of course these aren't places you can just waltz into at your leisure, so it was actually kind of cool for me, even if it may seem totally unremarkable to anyone who lives there full time. Had to fill out some forms and get a specialized photo ID just to get through the gate.

The base is essentially the same as any prefab neighborhood - lots of houses that look the same, bit of forest surrounding it, even a pool. Only difference is that there are also army facilities and training grounds at the nucleus of it all.

This is what most of it looked like:

And this is the town immediately outside the base's gate:

Pretty standard small town American south. Seen that view a hundred times.

Got there Friday afternoon only to turn right back around and head out to Dothan, a town about an hour away. Clay was meeting other army friends at this brewery in the middle of nowhere called Folklore. I wish I'd taken pictures of it. It was really just this kind of rickety building back in the woods with like giant Jenga and a bunch of chairs. Pretty good beer, though. Surprisingly good for what looked like an unkempt country backyard.

The next day we went to the aforementioned pool:

Took a lot of pictures from the car on this one. Figured walking around an army base conspicuously taking a bunch of photos might not be the smartest course of action. I might just get disappeared.

Saturday was pretty low-key. Sunday morning we got Bojangles, a restaurant I dearly miss here in Kentucky. Took a few more shots of the base:

Golf course!

Headed out and returned to Kentucky after that. And very soon, into the hurricane-like fray of an assistantship-based master's degree. So it goes.