Fort Bragg - Still a Mystery

I wish I had a better Fort Bragg orientation, or introduction to living on an Army base.  There are so many things that I just don't understand about living here.  Maybe it's that I am extremely aware of what's going on around me.  The runway at Pope Air Force Base draws a line right over my house and I love, love, love seeing the airplanes fly so low over us.  Chalk that up to having a pilot mom, obsessesed with anything with wings and a motor, and you'll find me running outside just to see the belly of a C-130 cruising right over me.

I guess I just really want to know why they are flying right then.  Is it training?  Are they going somewhere overseas?  I fully understand this is none of my business.  At all.  I'm just really curious what going on around here.  I know if Gunnar were here, he'd be able to tell me a thing or two or a hundred.  I can't wait for him to come home and help explain some things about this place. 

Take last Friday, for example.  Every soldier I saw around base was wearing their dress uniforms.  I'm sure there is a more technical name for these but basically they all looked like this:

Was it a holiday?  Were there ceremonies of some kind?  Some important dude's birthday?  Was it a sad day?  A funeral?  A happy day?  Did soldiers come back from a deployment?  (By the way, I just learned that when soldiers return from a deployment, it's called redeployment- counterintuitive as all get-out but that's military-speak, I guess.)

Typically the soldiers always wear their ACU's on normal days around here.  ACU's are Army Combat Uniforms.  They look like this:

It's a funny uniform, if you ask me.  They are walking around base all day long with the boots and camoflauge, just in case, well, I have no idea really.  Just in case they need to quickly blend in with their surroundings?

Obviously there is a lot I still need to learn around here.  I'm getting more and more excited about having this life here at Fort Bragg but with my husband here.  It's going to actually be a lot of fun.  The latest (and by far greatest) rumor these days is that Gunnar's unit will redeploy back here in August!  I hope like all hell that it's true, because I'd love to have a little bit of summer left to enjoy with him.  I can't get the image of sitting on the patio, drinking cold beers, grilling some dinner, out of my head!