TDY Gouge - Kwajalein Atoll

Was recently TDY to Kwaj for a week (luckily not too long), most of the above gouge is still good but AFRTS has more channels (6-9) but still little worth watching.  You can rent a golf cart for $7/hr if you hate riding the rental beach cruisers (which you will after about half a day).  Macy's is basic quarters, and I do mean basic, and they charge around $109/night for the privilege.  It is all you can be when it comes to Army billeting!  There is a Burger King, Subway and Anthony's Pizza on the ground floor; but don't expect a full menu.  American Eatery is over by Echo Pier, but it's the same stuff you find at every PX/BX in the world.  There was no soda while we were there due to an island-wide outage of CO2.  The same went for propane, so if you plan to BBQ bring some charcoal!  The shoppette and "BX" have the bare minimums, and not much more.  Expect things like only two flavors of Gatorade (Lemon Lime and Fruit Punch).   If you like to be on the water there are many opportunities to do so, especially dive.  Watch The Silent Wrecks of Kwajalein Atoll on Amazon to see what is still around in the atoll, but remember that it's 45-50 miles from Kwajalein to Roi-Namur on the northern side so not easy to get to without some sort of transportation.

As for the base, it's Army so a lot of run-down facilities some of which--like the terminal--are scheduled to be demolished and eventually replaced.  It's hot and extremely humid, and this is coming from someone who lives in southcentral Texas.  Plan to sweat a lot, and bring sunscreen although the shoppette does carry a decent variety of the stuff.  I've already had a case of melanoma so I used the SPF 100+ spray on variety. 

The coolest thing are the nurse sharks that hang out by the dive shop when people clean fish.  Usually 7-9 of the 6'+ sized beasts will be there, buy some Vienna sausages from the vending machine and toss them in the water.  The sharks won't likely pay attention to them until the other fish do, then things get interesting.  I dipped my GoPro into the water off the dock and got some nice video of them from about ten feet away.