Homecoming.

For how crazy my deployment went, I was anticipating our fly-off/homecoming to be eventful. We had an early start that had the first helo take-off at 430am and loiter until I was able to take-off at 6am and joint. Usually if something breaks, it will break when there is a hard timeline to get the birds off before the ship pulls in for good. But everything went smooth. Both aircraft lifted and we gave the ship a sporty fly-by on our way home. The only problem was that "home" wasn't open because it was too early. So we flew around the area for 3.5 hours before we landed. It felt like the longest 3.5 hour flight ever but it was leisurely -- we were able to see Mt. Fuji, we did a Tokyo fly over and just flew around waiting for our squadron to get in to catch us. 

Good bye, USS SHILOH (CG 67); its been fun.

Coming around for the pass.

Yours truly in the lead. 

Thanks for the memories, Captain Morris!

 Time to head home.

We made it to the Japan coastline.

A quick trip to Hakone.

And then on to Tokyo.

Here we come.

Taxiing into the line.

 Excited! 

 Attack! 

 So good to finally be home! 

Kisses.  

 More hugs! 

 

Mom blocking Ellis from the picture.  Thanks a lot. 

Ellis kept saying, "momma look.... its daddy!" 

Home.