On to Reno . . .

R&R continued with a week in Reno. . .


The 10 hour drive to Reno has become a trek several times each year. With the snow capped mountains the scenery was gorgeous.



The road may not be as straight as between Reno and Las Vegas, but you can set it on cruise control and relax a bit.



It always feels great to get out of the vehicle! Finally in Nevada - the just over half way point.

At home with BLUE! It was wonderful to see him again.

The view of Peavine from Hidden Valley.

Billy and Blue playing.

Dani and Blue on a walk in Mira Loma Park.

Blue at dog park. He has always been a ball hog, but in the past 6 months he's mastered scooping up two balls at once. He's sitting over his treasures.

We had a family dinner - so Mandy (my cousin) and I snuck in a quick picture.

We spent an afternoon snowshoeing with my aunt, Kristy, cousin, Stephanie, and friend, Matt. We also had 3 dogs with us - they are so fun to watch. Look at Billy being devious with a snowball!

Dani and Blue with Lake Tahoe in the background.

Dani and Matt in front of Lake Tahoe.

Dani and Billy.

The ladies - Dani, Stephanie and Kristy.

Dani with Blue and Koda (Matt's dog).

Dani wrestling with Blue.

Beautiful Lake Tahoe.

Overlooking Lake Tahoe.

More of Lake Tahoe.

Billy had just taken a large tumble! It was priceless. Stephanie (behind) had the best view of the "catastrophe."

We found a snow cave, so of course Dani had to climb in.

And it was large enough to "strike a pose."

We stopped at the new lodge at Slide Side of Mt. Rose Ski Area. The view of Washoe Valley (and Washoe Lake) was beautiful.

Chelsea and Matt joined us for dinner one night. It was great to catch up and hang out a bit.

We spent a day skiing at Squaw Valley Ski Resort. Here's Billy with the sliver of Lake Tahoe in the background.

The day was sunny! It makes the views breathtaking.

Lake Tahoe from the top of the mountain.

Dani and Billy at the lodge.


Dani, Billy and Mom (Mati) at the Squaw Creek Resort lodge for lunch.

Here's how Billy spent several hours when we weren't out and about.

Dani, Billy and Blue. Blue doesn't seem very excited about this picture! :-)

On the way from Reno to Portland, we stopped in Sacramento. We met up with Laura (roommate from college) for lunch and a stroll around Old Town Sacramento.

Then on to Portland to meet up with more college friends - and I forgot my camera so I don't have pictures to share! But the trip was wonderful.

Questions from Home

Greetings again from Afghanistan! We returned from R&R on March 16th and have settled back into life here in Afghanistan. While on our R&R we had the chance to tour much of the greater Northwest including visiting friends and family from Walla Walla to Reno to Portland and points in between. In the future we’ll post some updates from the trip. For now though, we’ll try to answer some of the questions we received while on R&R.

WHERE DO YOU LIVE?
We live and work at Qalaa House, the headquarters for the US Army Corps of Engineers Afghanistan Engineer District - North in Kabul, Afghanistan. Imagine living on a 4 acre minimum security compound surrounded by 10ft tall walls and guard towers. Yep, that about sums it up . . . . But it is often referred to as Camp Cupcake due to some of the luxuries we have. From our compound, depending on how overcast the day is, we can see snow covered mountains in the background.

A couple hundred USACE employees are at Qalaa House so conditions are tight. We luckily got to pick our roommate (each other!) and thus share a room in one of the residence halls.


Our residence hall on the left. We are on the third floor…Notice the “elevator” we get to walk up and down every day!

Our room is approximately 8ft wide by 15ft long with a chigo for heating and air conditioning. We have a desk with a phone, computer with internet access, two single beds, two wardrobes, two nightstands and a mini fridge….Did we mention that space is tight?


View of our room from the doorway. Dani’s bed and wardrobe in the foreground, Billy’s bed is in the back of the room.

WHERE DO YOU WORK?
Dani works on the second floor of Qalaa House, the primary headquarters building for the compound.


View of Qalaa House from third floor balcony where we live. Dani has a 60 second walk from her room to work.


Dani at her desk on the phone, which if she isn’t out traveling the country is where you will usually find her.

Billy works in on the third floor of the engineering building at Qalaa, called Loma Linda. While the engineering building is on the other side of the compound from the residence, Billy only has a three minute or less walk to work.

This is Loma Linda. Billy works on the third floor...more stairs!

Billy at his desk, where you will always find him since he never makes it out into the field.

WE WANT A PICTURE OF YOU BOTH IN UNIFORM
Several people requested a picture of us in uniform.

Dani is in the Army Combat Uniform (ACU) with digital camo pattern. When she travels outside the compound she wears this uniform because it is fire retardant. Billy is in the typical Desert Camoflauge Uniform (DCU) which all the USACE employees are issued and wear while at work.

Vacation in Walla Walla

We spent about four days in Walla Walla before heading to Reno for a week. Below is the "trouble" we managed to find.


Mike, Greg, Ronnelle and Dani at Avatar in 3D (Billy's taking the photo). It was a lot of fun, and we looked just amazing in the new glasses. :-)


This is part of the 2-acre lot Dani and Billy purchases in August before deploying to Afghanistan. It's located near Stateline Road on the Walla Walla side in Hilltop Acres subdivision. We stopped by to take in the view and see how it was looking!


This if the view of the Blue from the lot.

Than plan has always been to clean up the yard in March - so here's the mess Dani and Billy managed to make in the front yard in just a matter of an hour. A LOT of plants needed to be hacked to the ground! We easily filled the garbage can and still need to tackle the backyard.

Dani hacking away at the various plants. There sure was a mess to clean up on the grass.

Monday afternoon Dani & Billy had some time and decided to go wine tasting. We were even able to convince Kathy to "play hooky" and join us for a few hours.

Dani couldn't resist the St. Patty's Day hat at one of the wineries! Kathy wasn't as thrilled to even be seen with Dani looking so silly. :-)

Dani and Billy met up with several friends, visited with co-workers, and made the trek to Reno (10 hour drive). . . . .

VCR Good News Story

Here is a recent story about the VCR missions taking place in Kabul. . . .

http://ntm-a.com/news/1-categorynews/127-war-time-humanitarian-relief

Valentine's Day in Wardak Province

This past week Dani took a trip to Wardak province with several of USACE's customers. The helo was absolutely FREEZING! The weather in the morning was wonderful, but in the afternoon we "raced" back to Kabul to beat the snowy weather. It was neat to see the weather moving in so quickly from the air. . . and luckily we made it, or we would have spent the night at FOB Airborne without anything but our uniforms and body armor.


The sunrise is always beautiful from the airport. From left to right is Dani & 3 CSTC-A representatives, Bobby, Paul and CDR Hawn.


The views while freezing almost make it worth the torture! :-)


The group visit the "flag ship" project for the ANP program. It is the National Police Training Center (NPTC), and is a huge facility. In this photo you can just see the outline of several building foundations.

This is another view of the "Training Compound" within the NPTC. This portion of the facility is the furthest along.

Another view from the air of the Training Compound.

Dani and CDR Hawn are consulting with the Contractor on how to best proceed forward with wadi (basically a large, natural drainage ditch) remediation.

Here is an example of a trench constructed to divert natural drainage away from the NPTC facility. It also servers as a anti-vehicle ditch to prevent a car bomb from approaching the facility.

We got to see the local laborers making CMU (concrete masonry units)! This machine is fed "mortar" in the front end, and near where the operator sits there are molds that get compacted.

When you lift the mold, wha-la, you have CMU ready to cure. Apparently the cure temperature is anywhere above 5 degrees Celsius. It was still requiring the water for the "mortar" to be heated in large drums over open flame.

The Contractor also told us a neat story about this "uncommon" handtool. On a site as large as this, there are only 2, yes, I said 2, rebar tying machines! Apparently it's a very popular item - whoever doesn't have one of the two is tying rebar by hand.

This photo is a little difficult to see in the smaller size, but this is a circular saw that was immediately mounted upside down to perform as a table saw. Again, there is only one, yes 1, of these on the site.

The mountains leaving the NPTC are gorgeous with all the snow.

In some locations we were low enough in elevation to see the snow line, and the pronounced drainages.

Heading back to Kabul, this is the "suburbia."

Kabul International Airport was exciting to see - it meant we made it just ahead of the weather. We hadn't been on the ground 10 minutes before it started snowing fairly hard. So Kabul didn't get a white Christmas, but partially had a white Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was done with flare!


The Dining Facility (DFAC) was done up for several days. It sure brightened the atmosphere.


In the evening a "chocolate" event was hosted in the District Room (one of the 3 main conference rooms). Just look at all the sweets that were available.

As is common for Sunday nights, Salsa completed the evening. This is a photos of some of the group in the K-Span (a building where weekly House Meetings, basketball, spinning, salsa, bazaars, etc. take place).