April 21, 2023 Heraklion GR – RV Travels in Europe and North America

Today is our last day on Crete, but the ferry is not scheduled to leave until 9pm, so we had time on our hands. Ton tripped yesterday and turned her ankle a bit so she is on light duty today, so I am going to have to entertain myself by playing archaeologist at the old Airforce base near the campground.

The old family housing next to the campground, still in use by the Greek Army as family housing.

Our campground is adjacent to what was Herlakion Airforce Base. The base was built in the early 60’s as a communication and monitoring base and was operated by the US Airforce until 1996. A portion of it was taken over by the Greek Army and Airforce, and a large part of it is abandoned but accessible by road.

I believe this is an old enlisted barracks.

I decided to take a walk thru the complex and see if I could identify what the purpose of the abandoned buildings were based on my experience in the military. My time in the military overlapped the existence of this base so the basic design of the buildings had a familiar feel as we were driving thru earlier.

This building may have been used for the telephone office. Before the internet you were allowed to make periodic phone calls home using a combination of radio and telephone. The tower makes me think this may have been that building. It may also of just been some kind of communications building. The other possibility based on the vent on the side is that it was some kind of recreation building with a snack bar, but the lack of windows makes me shy away from that.

Walking thru the ghost town of Heraklion Airforce Base was interesting and brought back memories for me of my military service in the 80’s and 90’s. A lot of the buildings looked identical to ones I used when I was stationed in Okinawa from 1979-81.

I identified this building as the Visitors Quarters. Every base has a place that is run as a hotel for short term stays. This one had the remnants of a neon sign over its door which is why I identified it as the Visitors Quarters instead of what was called in that era the Bachelors Officers Quarters. Today the Army has outsourced the Visitors Quarters operations to Holiday Inn.

The buildings were still pretty sound on the outside though the bushes and trees were overgrown, and most had been thoroughly covered with graffiti.

I believe this building was the main mess hall based on the kitchen exhaust stacks and the low long design which was pretty standard for “chow halls”. I probably could have confirmed my theory if I had worked thru the brush to get down to the building.

It was a fun diversion for me, after looking at ancient sites, I made my own discovery of a modern site.

This was the old headquarters building, that looks like it was built after the other buildings. It is not completely abandoned as some of the windows had flower boxes, and there were cars in the back.

We headed down to the ferry dock about 6pm and arrived around 6:30. When we arrived things looked much calmer than before. All of the cars that arrived were being sent right on to the boat, so Ton and I were optimistic. There were three slightly over sized vans sitting to the side, and when we pulled up we were told to join them “for a few minutes.” We ended up sitting there for two and a half hours as everyone but us was sent aboard. Towards the end it got a little chaotic as the trucks really started to role in just before the scheduled departure time. We had resigned ourselves to being the last one on again, when out of the blue someone came up and hurried us on board to be placed between two refrigerator trucks. Our optimism was unwarranted as again we boarded after the scheduled departure time.

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