Last week my family embarked on a bit of a painful road trip down south. My older brother, after two years of trying to make things happen, was accepted into the marines back in September. His graduation from bootcamp was Friday, and instead of flying, my parents wanted to drive down.
The trip itself was kinda brutal, especially since we left at night and we were all fighting to keep whomever was driving awake.
We arrived around 7:30 am to South Carolina. We checked into the hotel and left almost immediately to Parris Island where there was the first day of festivities. Basically, we saw the base, listened to speakers, watched a short video, and then were introduced to our new marines.
I was able to see a change in my brother; he was different, but witnessing in person the sort of humbleness they were forced to take on made all those military movies feel so real. In The Army Now and Major Payne may forever make us laugh, but it makes me question what is really going on here.
I’m not gonna go into my feelings about the military, but I just don’t think I like the idea of turning our family members into robots so they can be desensitized if or when it comes time for them to go fight the big fight in another land. It’s a real weird concept and I guess you don’t really notice it until you see the base camp in person watching all these kids marching in line getting yelled at. The stories my brother has are officially just plain ol’ memories which he can now at laugh, but it makes me wanna yell out WTF.
Anywho, his graduation was the day after, and we were able to bring him home after “being released” when the graduation ended.
We immediately started making our way north since it was still kinda morning at that time. We figured if we can drive through a good chunk of the daytime, it’ll be less brutal. It kinda worked? Well, we drove and drove and we made it to the top of Virginia for dinner time which was at Cracker Barrel, something we don’t have nearby in NY. It was like Sonic & DQ before they both came to Long Island. I’m sure before you know it there will be a Cracker Barrel soon. The shop up front is so presh and I wanted to buy everything. Maybe it’s a good thing there are no locations by me.
After dinner we drove and drove, made probably two more pit stops and made it home around 4:30am. Rough time, but it was an experience, that’s for sure. I’m real undecided how I feel about road trips.
So my brother is back from boot camp, and were lucky he’s able to stay for the holidays.
Oh, we also made a quick trip to Savannah for dinner the first night we were in SC. When I saw it was only an hour away, I thought “yea we drove for about 14 hours, but what’s one more hour to hop over to a neighboring state for dinner?” Savannah was nice, from what we were able to see in the dark at 7pm. I want to plan another trip there oneday so I can actually see the whole city, preferably during the day.
Savannah, let’s be friends ✌️ South Carolina, no offense, but you didn’t really have much there to entertain me. More and more everyday I’m really settling on the fact that I’m made for city life.
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