Home Leave Road Trip - Cadillac Ranch Amarillo TX

 

I prefer Carhenge in Nebraska, but this was another interesting car display that we hit on the road trip as we passed through Amarillo TX. If you ever find yourself in that town, then it's worth checking out and adding some spray paint if you want.

They sell spray paint and some other stuff or just pick up a nearly empty can from the ground and add a little something to this ever changing display. Why not? Everybody else is doing it.

Home Leave Road Trip - Colorado Springs CO

 

Our home leave road trip to South Dakota was a straight trip north from Texas along new roads to me. I decided we should go back through Colorado Springs and see some previous favorites for a day. Pike's Peak and Garden of the Gods are good for repeat visits. As my wife and I like to say, we can get more pics at a "different angle and different light."

Home Leave Road Trip - Mt Rushmore & Crazy Horse South Dakota

 

The initial idea and destination of our road trip was Mount Rushmore. However, the journey and everything else we saw and did along the way there and back is the real reason some goals are better achieved as a driving trip.

Home Leave Road Trip - Kansas & Nebraska

 

Our road trip to Mt Rushmore from Texas required driving for a day through some seemingly uninteresting areas of Kansas and Nebraska. We still managed to find a few things to see along the way with a little rest stop.

Home Leave Road Trip - Wichita & Lindsborg Kansas

 

We're back in the U.S. for home leave between overseas assignments, so we had a bit more time for a longer road trip. "The purpose of home leave is to ensure that employees who live abroad for an extended period undergo reorientation and re-exposure in the United States on a regular basis." (3 FAM 3430) We often follow the intent of that policy by exploring new parts of the U.S. each time.

2018 Travels

2018 Travels

Pikes Peak

Pikes Peak Colorado is at 14,115 ft / 4,302 meters. I would say it was a difficult hike full of peril, but in reality there's a paved road to the top. It was a bit of a drive but it wasn't difficult. It's also a beautiful drive so it's definitely a treat to experience it.

It's an easy way to see the world from the top of a mountain which is a special way to look at things. You have to see it in person to really get the feel of it since it really defies these pictures and words to describe it. Pikes Peak is a bit like looking out of the window of a plane... without the plane... and standing close to really long drop offs.

Garden of the Gods Powwow

This is a double treat with the Garden of the Gods in Colorado and the 9th Annual Powwow at the Rock Ledge Ranch next to it. The powwow celebrated Native American culture with dancing, food, and vendors. First, here's pictures of the Garden of the Gods.

Pueblos in NM

We passed two Native American pueblos while driving from Santa Fe to Colorado Springs. Puye Cliff dwellings near Española were more rugged and authentic with nice views of the area. The actively maintained Taos Pueblo had many shops and tourists but was still interesting to see. We didn't have time for Bandelier since it was further off our route, but I was told by several people that Puye Cliff is better in some ways because it isn't as highly visited. We just did a quick self-guided tour but the guided tour to the top looks interesting.

Santa Fe NM

Santa Fe is a great vacation destination and it was a favorite part of our home leave roadtrip. Wikipedia says "it’s renowned for its Pueblo-style architecture and as a creative arts hotbed" which gives it a distinct vibe of all around cool for me. We were only there a couple of days but this will be worth going back to many times in the future to see all of the stuff we missed.

Chickasaw Cultural Center OK

If you're ever in Oklahoma on I-35 between DFW and OKC then I recommend stopping at the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur OK. We did during our home leave roadtrip. You can wander around the grounds for free but the museum is well worth the entrance fee. The lunch special for $6 is also good value for some great Chickasaw food. The whole place was a high quality experience. I didn't take any pics inside the museum because it was just too interesting for wasting time with a camera.

a lego logo

New Orleans

Home leave is mostly about visiting family for me. There's been a little vacationing between road trip destinations as my family stretches from coast to coast. New Orleans was one of those destinations on the Hotter than Hell Tour of the southern states. I wouldn't fight for home leave to be in the middle of summer. I would pick spring or fall if I could do that based on my family's locations. Alas, home leave is firmly scheduled between overseas moves.

We stayed a few weekdays in New Orleans hoping it'd be a little quieter and that worked. Hotels were reasonable, Bourbon Street was tame, French Market wasn't too crowded, and the hop-on-hop-off buses worked well to get around. The bus included a free walking tour of the Garden District. I have to mention I prefer the European bus tours with headphones and recorded guides including examples of local music. It's much better to hear about the city as you drive around. There's very little time to hear about a site before the next one is in view so a recorded efficiency is good since not all guides understand their job.

The City Sightseeing New Orleans buses had some good and some terrible guides. A good guide provides interesting info before or as you see it. A few really bad guides were more interested in their attempts at barely related comedy routines, interacting with a few people sitting near them, pointing out things from a previous block, and generally standing in the way of actually seeing something. A couple of the guides thought we came to New Orleans to see them so they stood in the aisle blocking the forward view and ensuring they'd be in the pictures. We asked one if he could sit down or move since he was standing near us and he said no. He said he could move a little if I needed a picture but that never works. "Hey duck... oh, never mind, it's gone already." Fortunately they were multiple day tickets and we rode the route a few times. Otherwise the self-important guide would have been a real problem.

San Diego and Back Again

We drove from my parents' home near Ft Worth TX to my son and daughter-in-law's in San Diego CA and back again. We saw a lot of the southwest region doing it that way. This was definitely a good way to spend home leave, visit some family, and really experience home in a variety of ways. Here's a few pics of San Diego, Las Vegas, and the amazing Grand Canyon. I highly recommend the Grand Canyon for any bucket list. It's an amazing treasure of our home to visit on home leave.

Home Leave and Taxes

Some of my new hire classmates pointed out that home leave expenses are tax deductible. We need to keep all of the receipts as supporting documentation for this. It still seems odd that driving to visit family, eating, and staying in hotels would be tax deductible (only for the employee) but that's what the IRS says:

The amounts paid for travel, meals, and lodging while on home leave are deductible as travel or business expenses subject to the rules and limits discussed earlier. You must be able to verify these amounts in order to claim them. Amounts paid on behalf of your family while on home leave are personal living expenses and are not deductible.

IRS: U.S. Foreign Service Employees

The AFSA Tax Guide is another good resource for this information with tips about keeping a travel log.

Home Leave Finances

Home Leave Spending

Spending patterns don't just change because we live in spare bedrooms and hotel rooms during home leave. I didn't need a car in Sweden but will need one in Venezuela, so I bought a cheap used car when I arrived in the U.S. to ship to the next post. I wonder how many car changes will be needed over the years as import restrictions and opposite side driving changes vehicle requirements from post to post. Well, at least I have something for all of the road tripping I've planned for this home leave. I'm sure next time it'll need to be a rental car for this part so that'll be another budget item next time.

I've heard some people hate the required home leave because it's an expensive forced vacation. However, I love to have more free vacation and we all know it's coming so it can be budgeted for like any other expense. It's also another area where you need to expect the unexpected. I had to take an eye test to fix my driver's license in Texas and discovered I need glasses for driving. There's a few hundred dollars more I didn't plan to spend on glasses.

Advance of Pay

Even if you haven't saved up enough money for home leave, there's another way to tap your future pay besides credit cards. I found someone's blog post from 2008 about Advance of Pay and it also talks about the Foreign Transfer Allowance. They wrote: "Within 45 days before and 60 days after arriving to post, you can get up to 6 paychecks up front. You should take this loan in ALMOST EVERY CASE." I would add it makes sense if you're going to a high differential pay post where you may not be able to spend your money as easily and/or need to buy consumables and a car like I do. I'd pay off those expenses from future pay anyway so why not pull some of that pay to the present? If I was going to a higher cost of living post or a post with little or no extra allowances then this may not be a good financial tool. Either way it's good to have this option for an interest free loan of your own money.

An update to their instructions is to just fill out one JF-55 and scan it to the PayHelp email address. They were quick to add it to my paycheck and after another paycheck they started taking out the repayment, so be ready for reduced pay during home leave if you do it before leaving post. That's on top of losing any allowances you may have at post that don't get paid during home leave. I didn't request too much of an advance since it's a big chunk of a paycheck to take 6 paychecks and pay them back over 18 paychecks. But hey, I'm going to a 30% differential post so I can use a bit of that in advance.

Edit 2021: This request was migrated to the DS-4315 form in myData.

Mindful Spending

The other thing I'm thinking about is just being mindful about my spending. A thought keeps creeping in that I don't know when we'll be back to the U.S. for this or that unique thing or food. It's tempting to just go crazy and do whatever we want. I have some broad budget targets in mind for home leave so I'm going to try to stick to that as much as I can. I don't usually have the consumer Christmas financial hangover like many Americans experience so I'll probably be good in this area.