33 years ago today, the Good Ship Kitty Hawk tied to Pier 7 at Naval Station Norfolk marking the end of a 6 month cruise around the world. Little did I know that it would be my last deployment of six. I served with a lot of good men in Attack Squadron One Four Seven even though I was TAD to the AIMD Hydraulic/Pneumatic Shop. BTW, we were the best Hydraulic/Pneumatic Shop in the United States Pacific Fleet in 1987.
Upon arrival every C-9 and DC-9 in the Naval Air Reserve was at NAS Norfolk to take the Air Wing personnel home. We were all home by 7 PM Pacific Time.
As an Intermediate Level guy, I was transferred to a new unit that was at each Naval Air Station with deploying squadrons called Sea Op Det. It had some severe teething problems in the beginning. It was not set up for a PO1 with almost 14 years of service. That is a story for another day.
Among The Joshua Trees 
Kudos to you for those deployments. There were also the workups, underways for exercises, much other BS to keep you on the boat.
I was a crew member onboard USS Charles F Adams DDG-2. We departed NAVSTA Mayport about Dec 30, 1988 for six month Med deployment. Seem to recall going alongside KHAWK crossing the Atlantic in order to top off with fresh water. I guess that was almost 33 years ago, may be mis-remembering the event. We were told at the time KHAWK had just departed Philly and was going to San Diego the LONG way around the world.