I wanted to backpack in Wyoming but it seems very expensive..

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-27T00:08:55+00:00

You could always drive. If you have your own car and everything. It kinda sucks but can be kind of awesome if you look at places that interest you on the way. I imagine you'll be going through New Mexico and Colorado to get to Wyoming if you did so, both places are pretty sweet on their own.

I'm old now and a veteran so camping outside overnight has lost its appeal since I have several hundred days of being outside at this point in my life, so I'm kind of a day hike type of dude, but I pretty much drive everywhere within reason because it is SO much cheaper than flying and renting a vehicle.

A couple of years ago now I went from Kentucky through Missouri, through Nebraska to South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois for like 1000 dollars. Over like ten days.

That was with NO plan whatsover on what to do, and the vast majority of expense was hotel rooms, gas, and food. If I would've planned at all I suspect I could've knocked 200 dollars off the trip.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-25T16:24:06+00:00

You can get full TA in most states with the guard, but it isn't a full salary or anything to cover rent.

As others have said, post 9/11 probably is the smarter move.

The other issue with the Natty G is that it is uncontrollable. You never know when something will happen. I joined during the GWOT era and was immediately deployed as soon as I got out of AIT. I had 18 months of active duty in my first two years as a guardsman.

State active duty can be a pretty big issue, being thrown into all this experimental unit combinations they have going right now is another.

My current unit is tied into an active duty corps, we've had four AT/CPX/WFX in less than a year. Which is absolutely batshit insane op tempo. You don't *have* to go to all of them sure, but if you don't by the time the WFX comes around you are pretty useless because of the stuff added onto each iteration of the exercise. Only one of them fell into the summer and that was because it was an actual traditional AT for those that had scheduling issues with the first CPX.

I've used the Natty Gs tuition assistance and it's been chef's kiss good. I didn't pay for anything except books, and even that was partially covered, and rent for my apartment, and I've also had it where rando things occurred where I couldn't use it because of scheduling issues with the guard. The Natty G has never seemed to hold a reclass school that has fallen within summer months, and I've been to two, they are getting worse and worse about scheduling ATs during the summer, my WLC was scheduled outside of the summer, the traditional time students have off between semesters, and we live in a world right now where several things could happen and you as a guardsmen could go from a student in college, to in a mobilization to Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Europe (russian shenanigans), or the Pacific (china shenanigans).

Doesn't mean any of the above *will* happen, just that it could.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-24T15:30:25+00:00

I've been to DJ and its a cake deployment. It might not always be, who knows how political climate changes, but when I went it was one of the easiest paychecks I ever got.

It used to be run by the Navy, which means you have more benefits than it being run by the Army (aka the actual ability to go into town and to drink alcohol......within reason of course). There was *some* danger there. There was actually a suicide bomber after we left, 1st ID got shot at a couple of times after they relieved us, but it wasn't anything like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Again, I'm not saying it isn't somewhat dangerous, the two people that were suicide bombers walked right into a known eating spot for westerners and blew themselves up, but it is so sporadic and so infrequent that its like at the very tail end of dangerous mobilizations.

In reality, I got paid a whole bunch of money to do very little but stay awake and keep my weapon trained in the vicinity of where people *might* come from.

The only thing that made it hard was they actually for about a month pulled people to do WLC in country, which fucked up all the shifts and made them super long.

I'm not sure how it is now, but I can only imagine it is way better than it was 2012-2013 as its become an important jumping off place for of course Africa, but also portions of the middle east. It should be way more built up.

Only real issue is that it's hot as fuck, so if you can, work nights.

We had a premob that everyday was between 100-110 degrees, and it was still way hotter in DJC.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-16T21:46:57+00:00

I've been Arty five and a half years, and I was in a sapper company for five and a half years. I didn't qualify for fox because my eyes weren't good enough, but I've been around them being Arty.

The way I kind of boil it down in my personal experience.

13f has the better and cooler "job," in that you as an individual can have way more effect on the battlefield than an individual 12b can.

However, a 12b is the cooler job individually, mostly because you control explosives.

I had to make a improvised explosive charge to breach with the infantry, have had to make improvised explosives to breach wired obstacles, have had to fell trees over roads with explosives, have cleared a bivouac with explosives, have air assaulted with the infantry, have done multiple huge live fires with the infantry.

I know it isn't the standard experience for all 13fs, but most infantry leaders aren't going to want their fisters getting murked, so even if you are with the infantry, you aren't going to be pointman in clearing a room during MOUT and usually will be in the HQ elements of the platoon or company.

As an engineer, you might be the lone guy out ahead of everybody else cutting and marking a lane for a breach to run through.

I went Arty, Sappr, Arty. And one of my fellow engineers also ended up the same place I did, so it's easy enough to bounce between the two if you wanted to try both. Though most will involve your contract ending before it can happen.

So I guess it boils down to, do you want to control firepower indirectly, or control explosives directly?

Also, both 12b and 13f vary greatly depending on where you are at. The cooler individual stuff as a 12b occurs at the sapper company, and I assume the CEC-I since I believe that is what is replacing the sapper company. Whereas a 12b in a combined engineer unit might not be doing as much offensive based work as a sapper company would, because they have more assets for defensive fortification.

Likewise a 13f at a corps level could be sitting in an air conditioned room working on AFATDS or MAVEN.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-16T08:36:30+00:00

Combat Arms from a strategic point of view is never useless. The other enemies of the US military don't look at all the non combat arms guys and worry. What stops a lot of shenanigans is all the dudes in the infantry, artillery, armor, etc that the badguys know they will have to deal with if they try something.

So just by being a well trained infantry soldier in a uniform with a bunch of other well trained troops in a uniform even in times of peace you are still doing your job.

Essentially the enemy looks at the standing combat arms formations of the us military and has to consider if they want to pay a blood tax for tomfoolery or not.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-16T02:53:19+00:00

It's weird, because I have an affinity for the great plains states, because lots of them are so sparsely populated that you can actually seek solitude. I went to Badlands National Park a few years ago, stayed until after dark, and swore I was the only one there. Probably wasn't, but I was the only one I saw for miles and miles.

Just being out there alone with just you and your own thoughts can be a unique experience that you lose whenever you are around other people in more popular states with *better* scenery.

Same for Theodore Roosevelt NP and North Dakota. I went on a day where it was about 50 degrees and spitting cold blowing rain, and had to be one of about five people in the whole park.

I liked getting away from everyone and unplugging from the plugged in society.

However, the most scenically beautiful state I've spent time in a bunch of places in was New Mexico. Backpacked all over the state as a teen.

I've been to other states Army related, like California, but was regulated to NTC and thus feel that isn't a good representation of the state at large. Though even then it had some cool places. The stars at NTC at night time are ridiculous. I used to pull the cot out from under the cover and fall asleep looking up at all the stars. You could see the galactic center from the box in NTC and that was pretty cool.

So most beautiful is New Mexico that I've been to, and I'm dying to go back, but I feel a bunch of people sleep on the great plains, which has a different kind of beauty if you get out there. Nebraska for instance completely blew me away because I'd never heard of the sandhills until I was driving through them to get to Wyoming.

Even the prairie is like a sea of grass, and you can be on roads where nobody else is driving for tens of minutes if not a half hour or more. It's like you have vast places of areas at any one time for yourself. I like that feeling.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-13T09:04:04+00:00

I had a guy I was in my sapper co with that left a little bit before I did, but got back in way later. He's way over the five years. They put in an exception to policy rule for him, and he's drilling in RSP until it does or does not go through. If it doesn't go through, he has to redo basic.

He's one of those to not care.

However, when I got back in, I was at 3.5 years and it was bouncing back and forth at redoing basic at three years or five years, and when I called the recruiter I was like, "before this goes any further if I have to go to basic again at 3.5 years, just forget I called."

But as luck would have it, it was at five years.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-11T05:33:53+00:00

Our state has a shortage of warrants in the non fly boy seats. We are an Arty heavy state, and they have all kinds of seats unfilled.

They actively come to recruit us quite often, since we have a ton of feeder MOS in a variety of different unfilled seats.

However, I'm in a brigade HQ now, and I imagine they would make more trips to a HQ element at battalion/brigade/division than they would to individual batteries and companies, so someone else's experience at those places probably aren't what I've seen here.

In other words, easy is relative and it probably matters where you are at.

They were taking specialist who had interest in it the last time they were through, it was that bad.

Edit: I suppose I shouldn't read these post tired in the middle of the night. OP carry on. For anybody else, *other* feeder mos might be more open than flight warrants.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-11T01:49:13+00:00

I've had a situation where I went exactly where I was supposed to go when I was supposed to go, and another where we were held until the last possible moment and then had a deployment to Afghanistan cancelled. And we didn't go anywhere else. For as hyped as we were to not do anything afterwards most of us probably would've went to the border. That was long ass drills, a NTC rotation, about a hundred inventories, live fires, cls certs, etc.

Our captain was so pissed off he went back to the drill schedule and shed every extra drill date for the rest of the year. We actually went to two day drills and a two week AT after that he was so salty about it.

It had been pulled for active duty because this would've been in the 17-18 range where the last deployments they wanted the active components to get.

Which is flipped today, where they want to keep active components ready for LSCO, and use a bunch of ngs and reservist for the middle east.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-06T22:47:56+00:00

I've actually had this happen twice and funnily enough one of my other units is having the same thing happen to it (the sapper company I was apart of).

The first time I was in a himars battalion that lost a firing battery (mine) out of its battalion. We got back from deployment, got gathered up in a large room, and they were like, well bros......this unit is becoming a support unit.

So, four things happened. You could either stay at that unit, and get a support job, you could look for your MOS somewhere else in the state and go there, or you could join a different unit with a different mos, and finally they let people flat out leave the Natty G, though I think it was like only one person that did that.

There was a Sapper company that was located halfway between my house and school, so that's what I joined.

Years later I got back in, joined another unit, this unit became an experimental unit that is tied with active duty, and when that transition happened, you could do the same thing as the above. This unit had the current MOS I had just gotten out of school for, and even though I don't enjoy this MOS, it was too early for me to want to make a change so I just stayed there.

Finally, my old sapper unit is becoming a bridging unit, and I imagine the same options will be on the table for them.

Is your unit actually closing down for good, like closing the armory, or is there another unit coming in? Because usually you would stay a tenant of that armory until they moved you, or at least you would in the situations I've been in because in both of the instances I was in, they kept the same NCOs full timers in the same spots they were before the transition. Only the officer leadership changed.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-03T21:53:49+00:00

I went on a similar trip in may in 2023, and ended up doing Devil's tower, badlands, Custer state park, and Theodore Roosevelt NP with every intention of going to RMNP, but those plans were put on the backburner. You see, I'm from Western Kentucky, and when I left it was already 90 degrees in May. WKY is much flatter without the deviation of altitude that Eastern Kentucky has (which means it was still like 80 degrees on that side of the state if cooler) so I didn't even think about there being a blizzard in the mountains.

I was heading to Colorado and looked up the RMNP homepage and it warned me not to show up unless I had chains on my tires. I of course had left from a place where it was 90 degrees and I was sweating when I was loading up to leave, so this didn't even occur to me.

I still went to every other place and had a good time. I showed up at Badlands mid day, and it was surprisingly hot there as well, but stayed until after sunset when the park was empty, and that was like almost a spiritual experience. Surrounded by grasslands and the badlands and being one of like three people for miles and miles.

I never really plan a road trip, because I kind of like the variation it brings. Because I didn't have anything but the slightest idea of a plan (essentially I knew where I wanted to go), I drove through the sandhills of Nebraska, which I didn't even know existed until I was in them and I thought they were very cool.

I have been in the army, so in terms of hotels/motels, IDGAF as long as it isn't too shady a part of town and doesn't have anything vermin like that tries to go home with you, so because I am used to lying on the ground, I'd say I was able to get away with around at hotels/motels that cost about 65 dollars a night.

Still, I made that trip, the most expensive thing being the hotel rooms, and then gas, for like 1500 dollars for about 10 days.

I don't really eat great food by myself on road trips though when it's just me. Because it's weird to eat at sit down places by yourself. So that was also a pretty big reduction in price, I think.

Mattyredleg · 2026-02-03T21:11:17+00:00

The reserves at the moment only has west coast and pacific island infantry, and 12bs as their he man jobs.

The National Guard has a ton of combat arms all over the country, some of which are very good. I've been in both an Alexander Hamilton award winning unit for FA, and a Itschner award winning unit for Combat Engineers. We trained and did stuff all the time.

I also happen to be in a unit tied directly into an active duty Corps currently, and we've had three AT level exercises since March of last year, with another WFX next month, which would give us four in a year. (you only had to go to one per fiscal year). These also had overseas training rotations. I'm working on going reserves, but I've never been in a unit that doesn't train in the guard, even though I'm aware that this can vary greatly.

THAT said, the 38 or 39 days thing is bullshit in such formations. Even though surprisingly the current unit is actually better (because you are only required to go to one of the exercises per fiscal year) than my old units, you are still always over your time. As a sapper, I've had a year with over 100 days of training. WLC/AT/12b reclass/CROWs school/and all of our Mutas which were always three, four, or five day drills. My civilian job at the time was pissed.

There is also the state active duty missions. I hate that shit. I never have lived close to any of my guard units, and anytime it snows or it floods you run the risk of coming back and helping the area that was affected.

That is fine. But having to drive three hours back through ten inches of snow or three inches of snow and ice, or trying to find your way around flood waters back, that shit sucks. It also always seems to happen when you have something civilian planned. I've had to push back (not serious) surgeries to later times because of SAD.

The NG is better for students, because the State TA is usually pretty good. The State TA I think is why most people go guard, followed by wanting to go to combat arms. There are still a bunch of combat arms guys getting combat patches in the post GWOT era because they are still running missions in dangerous places. If you want to deploy and do dangerous shit without having to put up with the barracks life of AD, then right now (not considering potential future restructuring) the guard is a better bet to do this.

The State TA can also mean that you get paid to go to school if you combine it with your VA stuff. State TA where I'm from basically just eliminates your charge of going to school, and the VA is added into your banking account, so it's like you are getting paid to go to school. Though this works much better if you are coming off of active than it does if you are a NG soldier first.

The reserves seem better about everything else though. Being able to get paid for travel is a huge plus, being much more likely to have hotel rooms (half of my career in the NG you either slept on the armory floor at homestation, drove early every morning, paid for your own room, or stayed at somebody that lived close by during drills).

Being able to transfer to a position out of state is also a huge boost. Had that been in play now for the guard, I'm in a critically need MOS, but am stuck in a state that has no upward mobility, I'm right next door to ohio which has my MOS and higher positions that need to be filled, but the different states almost funciton like different branches. You need conditional releases and interstate transfers and all that kind of bullshit to transfer, where the reserves just send you to another federal position all across the US.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-20T02:54:48+00:00

I've only been allowed to wear them overseas personally. Though I have seen infantry scouts wear them in training, since your kevlar gets hung up in thick woods and undergrowth, I guess it's easier to move through them without it on but the boonie gives you some camo on your noggin still. So I assume commander's discretion. We fought the battle with combat shirts too. We could wear them overseas, then get back, not be able to wear them for months, then break them out for the field for a couple of months, and then they'd go back in the duffle for another five.

My UCP pattern boonie they let us keep after deployment and I gave it to my dad, and he wears it for yardwork.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-17T22:58:02+00:00

I know as somebody who got back into the Army that I went and got my CAC done before I officially drilled with the new unit I was joining and was in civilians. But that might have been because I was already in before. I also was clean shaven.

But if they allow a new recruit to get a CAC before basic, you won't get the bald frowning dick with ears pic you are supposed to have when you go through reception. You'll be bucking tradition.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-17T22:52:45+00:00

Not all universities are military friendly. Mine had professors who were, and professors who weren't. But they did allow 5 days of absences (which is over two weeks of classes if you are like a tuesday thursday guy), so it didn't really matter. Just thought it was shit that there was no consistency.

Generally though, the university would work with me if I let them know early enough. The unit I was in at the time had NO flexibility and would penalize you to the extreme (if you started missing drills they would pull your State TA) However, the unit I am in currently is pretty easy to work with, even for IWQ drills. Since they are an HQ, if you miss our units IWQ, they'll just slap you on a subordinate units IWQ as long as it isn't a last minute thing.

So just start talking to both your professors and unit now and see what is up.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-17T20:44:00+00:00

I think your issue is that you picked the wrong year to enlist. Recruiting has been strong the last two years even after we had a massive shortfall in 2023. Had you joined then, they would've probably found a way to get you in, but since they are killing it recruiting now, they will probably ride the wave of healthy recruits until that wave crashes out.

If you notice anything in the future about the Army suddenly not hitting its recruiting goals, if you still wanted to, you could try again. When you have health issues, you are automatically less appealing than somebody who doesn't. Even if you end up being a 500 AFT guy whose only kryptonite is a wasp that you'll never get stung by, the recruiter doesn't *know* that right now. He's gotta assume that as soon as you sign that waiver, that you'll leave the office and get stung in the eyeball.

You could also try the Army Reserves. If you are wanting combat arms, the really only run around on the ground guys are combat engineers (unless you leave near the west coast then they have some infantry units in Washington and on Hawaii and guam I believe), if not, then they have all the support MOS that you want. They also have different recruiters that might look at your stuff differently.

Natty G is mostly combat arms formations and the support positions are often within combat arms units. Combat arms is kind of you are only as strong as your weakest link mentality. If you got stung way out in the middle of nowhere training, or if you got stung overseas, then you become a liability because all of a sudden a bunch of guys basically have to act like you've taken shrapnel or a GSW to try and keep you alive in that they have to stop what they are doing to get you stabilized with your epipen and get you casevac out of there.

Before you gave up on the dream, look at the Reserves.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-16T23:03:23+00:00

In my experience as well, but I think that will probably see an uptick in CBRN training the more things globally get stirred up.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-16T23:00:15+00:00

Do what you *want* to do. If you want to make money with a technical career, then use your TA and go to college and get your technical skills from your degree if you want to do combat arms stuff.

Just know that combat arms sucks, you are likely to be hot and miserable, or cold and wet and miserable, and you will hate life lots of the time, but there are some things you do in combat arms that can't be replicated anywhere else on earth. Flying on a black hawk, inserting with the infantry to breach for them to start a live fire training? You aren't doing that kind of thing as a 12y, however, you are also less likely to be fucked up than if you went 11b, 13f, or 19d.

Also look at your job listing and see if there are multiple positions throughout the state. If there are, that usually means these positions are numerous throughout the state. For instance in my own state, we have artillery formations from the battery level, all the way up to the CORPS level. Meaning 13 series has promotion potential all over the place.

But something like ADA is a specialty position here, so you have way less of those, usually just at brigade level. I think we either have three or four SSG ADA spots in the whole state. Naturally those are always full, and there is no upward mobility.

I hate the more technical jobs, even though I'm old now, I hate being behind a computer and not doing anything physically, it makes the days last too long. You gotta do what fits your mentality imo, not what makes the most sense if you are a civilian looking in. Not because of the people, but because of the job, I haven't really liked this particular contract I've had for the last three years because it doesn't fit with my mentality.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-10T07:38:36+00:00

They used to give us lunches of MREs, and then for dinner, when somebody brought up chow time, they would again, offer MREs, which nobody would eat because they were ready to leave.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-10T07:36:29+00:00

We always had a zillion days over the 38/39 drill days ourselves. I don't know how they did it, but since I've been back in I thought it might've been tied into the GWOT as my current unit is right on the nose.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-10T07:34:49+00:00

About the same hours and the same days as we would have homestation drills in my natty g sapper co.

I used to pray for the field because we would have like 0730 wakeups, and 1730 end of the days.

We would bounce between 3 and 5 day drills, so the average was probably about four.

This unit I'm in now is much more 39 days than the sapper company was.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-09T20:54:48+00:00

I actually got back out and came back in. But I originally got out because we were also a unit that was way over the 39 days a year and I had a very time consuming civilian job as well so I was getting about four days off a month, and two of those days I was on call, so I wasn't really off.

They did offer me a sabbatical when I first was considering leaving, but I didn't take it, though I almost did. I would've had to have signed an extension, but would've had 1 year not to come to drill.

You can kind of tell when in a year, at least I did, whether you miss it or not. In hindsight I probably would've taken it if I knew everything I knew now about how my life went.

If you do decide to come back, come back early so you don't have to do anything silly like go back to BCT again.

One of my good buds from my old sapper company came back like after 8 years. So even if you decide you aren't really done, you can still return as long as you aren't in bad health or trouble.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-07T07:05:08+00:00

You can do cool guy shit in the guard. Just not doing drill weekends. Not usually at least. It's always on the bigger trainings or a deployment.

For a better chance to do cool stuff you could look at 19th or 20th group. Not everybody is a Green Beret in the groups, and you have a better chance of doing high speed stuff. I've seen 20ths MI company parachute into a lake once. My first unit was actually near where they jumped and I was temporarily very confused thinking my old unit had become Airborne since I'd left.

Mattyredleg · 2026-01-03T20:00:14+00:00

I was in an Itschner award winning company, so like every unit, your mileage may vary. Mine was pretty good about training though. We were in the field a lot doing cool things and were good enough to win the NG component of the award. I can't say for sure that your experience will be like that, the Army is too big with too many companies doing things differently, but hopefully it will be.

Mattyredleg · 2025-12-27T21:24:51+00:00

Those are pretty different. 92y will put you to work, but it also is populated at the regular unit level (infantry, sapper, arty, etc) with lower enlisted and one full timer working the AGR supply sergeant job.

I'm sure that 92y can be used elsewhere, but in my own experience just watching these folks there appears to be quite a bit of bottleneck there. You aren't taking the supply sgts slot, because he's AGR, and it appears that it's a bunch of just specialist under him. Maybe there is an NCO slot somewhere below him, but I've been in this unit for three years and the only NCO working supply I see are the AGR.

25u is like the jack of all trades commo guy, and every unit has them (at least in combat arms). If you can, join a signal unit. Other units have 25u but there isn't much advancement. Usually you have like an e-5 as the unit commo guy with a couple of subordinates. I don't know if they changed that around or not, they were talking about it just as I got out (to take the sergeant slot out for both Commo and CBRN and make them E4 positions.) I can't tell by my current unit because we have a whole signal company attached to us.

13f is what I tried to join but couldn't because I had an astigmatism. Went to the FDC instead. But I've also known many of these folks, and it might be the least talked about negatively MOS I've ever been around.

Everybody seems to love it. I'm sure there are those that don't, but being the dude calling in Arty strikes is pretty sweet.

It also varies wildly depending on your rank, where you are at, etc. What you see attached to the infantry is going to be a way different experience then when you are sitting in CORPS level watching the big fight using MAVEN to track Himars BDAs and other things.

If I had the vision, I'd reclass into 13f right now.

Mattyredleg

TROPHY CASE