Hessen is the area where I did my first serious castle research. While I had toured castles in southwest Germany, I didn't get more serious until I was there on my first tour in the Army.

Many of the photos taken on this page date back to 1977-79 when I did my first tour in the Army.  Thus the photos are somewhat vintage, in the days when I was a young pup assigned to the 2/32 Armored Battalion, 3rd Armored Division at Ayers Kaserne. However, those with green labels are more recent, the oldest being in 2012.

Below left, our tanks headed for the local Area 44 training site, a glider airfield just southwest of our kaserne. Below, the glider field as of 2007, no longer showing the scares of tank tracks churning the mud.

Left, slogging my way through a thunderstorm's deluge in Weidelsburg.

In the map below, the blue sites are ones initially visited in the late 1970s. Green sites are from a 2012 trip.