13 Jun 2025 - RV Repairs, Great Lakes Naval Base, Out to Eat with Michelle's

 

Another great day with daughter Michelle and her family, but Doreen has come down with a nasty cold so we are working through that.  

This morning while Michelle was working I left Doreen and Liberty at the camper and I drove to Michelle's house to help son-in-law Keith with a small repair job on an MCD blind in their camper.  They also have an Alliance coach but theirs is larger than ours.  It has a multi-purpose room that doubles as a bedroom and an office, and a loft overhead.  One of their shades quit retracting so I brought some parts from the Alliance Rally and Keith and I repaired the shade.  

This afternoon Doreen and I drove south towards Chicago to the Great Lakes Naval Facility to visit Michelle at work.  She is the Recruit Training Command mathematics curriculum director for the Future Sailor Preparatory Course.  Their goal is to tutor the recruits who are struggling with math and thereby have scored low on the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB).  Improving their score allows the recruits to continue with basic training and potentially become sailors.  There is also a physical fitness tract as well as reading comprehension and verbal knowledge tract.  Since Michelle was born on an Air Force Base and grew up in a military household, coupled with her Masters Degree and 23 years of teaching math, she was a perfect fit for this position.  

We met Michelle in her parking lot and her co-workers were heading out for the day as well.  We got to meet them and I thanked them for what they do for our future sailors.  Michelle then escorted Doreen and I through her area.  Having completed Air Force basic military training this brough back many memories!  The Navy has configured their facilities to generally simulate ship-life.  The doors on the rooms are equipped with portals!

The latrines are labeled "heads".  The building names are ships.  

Their medical facility is similarly named,  

We saw recruits marching and practicing facing movements.  They were chanting cadence, guidons in position and road guards were out!  Ah the memories!

The classrooms were vacant for the day as we toured her area. Computers are used for much of their training and testing.

This was an interesting training room where they learned how to secure the ship with a mooring line on a bitt.  

This was a vacant bunk room.  The bunks are hinged allowing access to storage beneath

This was a sign in Michelle's office.  Michelle and those in her office have a huge impact on these future sailors. We are so proud of her!  

We wrapped up our tour and followed Michelle off-base.  We headed back to the campground and Michelle headed home.  Later, Doreen, Liberty and I drove to Michelle's house where we all went out to eat.  

Mexican food tonight!

A tasty margarita!

A pina colada

After dinner we headed across the street to Moran's Pub which is an Irish pub in South Milwaukee.  Moran's organized a tour to Ireland a few months ago and Michelle & Keith went on it to celebrate their wedding anniversary.  We stopped by to hopefully meet the owner but he was not there.  We did enjoy a Guinness and Michelle & I participated in a round of Guinness Golf, also called "Splitting the G".  This is a tradition where you take a large swig of Guinness so that the liquid level perfectly aligns with the middle of the "G" in the Guinness logo on the glass.   Needless to say neither of us were successful.  We must practice more!!

Michelle & Keith's friend Kevin and Nikki arrived with their sons and it was great to see them and catch up with them a bit.  We used to see them at the campground when we came up.  

We had a great time tonight and some great food.  Tomorrow Joe is going to take us to see some of the mansions he has been working on and then tomorrow afternoon Keith & Michelle bring their camper out to the same campground we are at and we will spend some time with them around the campfire before we take off on Monday and drive to Iowa.