Chesapeake Trip Day 4 - In Norfolk, VA

OK, so this is not much of a sailing story today. We stayed put in Norfolk to do a little sight-seeing. First up was the USS Wisconsin battleship. It is berthed just a few minutes from our marina. It is certainly huge! This is the view of the bow.


I didn't realize how newly "decommissioned" this boat was - it served in Desert Shield until 1991.
Yours truly, the tourist - guidebook in hand, sunscreen on face...walking shoes on instead of my boat shoes!


To tell you the truth, I was a little disappointed in the Wisconsin tour - you only got to walk around the outside. No inside tour at all - I was really more interested in the berths, the galley, the heads, the "war room" etc. Oh well.....can't beat the price (free!)

We also toured the Naval Museum - and among all the stuff on the walls Duane spotted the following display - it mentions the USS Phillippine Sea - which was the aircraft that my dad was assigned to in the late 1950's. Cool!



They were mentioned because the ship was based out of Norfolk.


Leaving the museum, I spied this display. I had walked a step or two past it when I handed the camera to Duane....he rolled his eyes and said "dang, I thought you hadn't seen that!". I, of course, took the camera back after my shot and tried (in vain) to coax him into a photo! As you can probably tell, this was actually for little kids....but I was one for a few minutes there.....


We walked around Norfolk - a beautiful city if there is such a thing! Neat as a pin and so beautifully landscaped.


Even the side streets have trees and bushes in the medians.

An amazing amount of what appears to be prime real estate is devoted to greenery.


Just another boat shot from the second floor of the building overlooking the marina.


Also visited the MacArthur Museum - notice a pattern? Very nicely done also. I'm assuming it is in Norfolk because his mother's family was a prominent Norfolk family.

Since we are being absolutely worthless today, we decided to take advantage of our city location an catch another movie. Wow - two movies in three days. Best I can remember, the last movie we saw in a theater before these was "The Bucket List" - I looked it up - we saw that movie when it was fairly new - and that was over a year and a half ago! Hey, don't look at me like that! We're usually just not interested enough to drive the half hour to see a movie.....but we enjoyed this one - Angels and Demons. We've both read the book so it made the movie very easy to follow. It was well done.

We're off tomorrow for Smithfield up the James River. It just a short 20 miles and the winds should be favorable for a lively sail. I doubt we'll have internet so stay tuned in a couple of days!!