Nauticus

This morning we got up drove down the road to the waterfront. The wind down there was amazing because it was coming from the ocean in front of us and also from the Chesapeake Bay to the left of us. It was awesome to try to walk forward into it, but was a little chilly too. We walked to Nauticus, the Hampton Roads Navy Museum, which has a battleship attached to the museum. We got tickets and then went to the Real Pirates exhibit in another building first and took about an hour to walk through that. It was packed with National Geographic pirate items and information, but there was just too much to read and see to get through everything. I read most of the signs and looked at all the exhibits and videos at the start, but then just skimmed as I worked my way through the building. After that we went back to the main building and started at the top floor with all the U.S. navy exhibits. There was even more information in the actual museum, but there was some cool stuff to see. Bryn and I tried out one of those pictures that have the faces cut out. The pictures were of sailors, but whoever made the face cutouts did something strange with their shoulders so the pictures of us my mum got are quite amusing. We also got pictures of us in a rope exhibit. There were all these different types of ropes hanging from a rack and I got the bright idea to hang from them. Bryn and I did while my mum took a few pictures and then right after that she saw a sign at the top of the rack that said "Please do not hang from ropes." She scolded us for disobeying and then took a picture of the sign and we moved on. There was a whole section with some marine animals like some kinds of rays, some small sharks like dog sharks, and a moray eel. I tried to have a conversation with the moray eel, but he wasn't too responsive. Then we went to another part of the museum that dealt with more science-y type of stuff. There was a dust tornado that taught us about how tornadoes are made and then a lightning exhibit. Then Ty and I found this deep-sea diver submersible thing that we thought looked awesome. The back was cut off and we could go inside, so we did. We found out that you could use some controls to move the robotic arm and so we took turns controlling different aspects of the arm, trying to pick up some objects in the sandbox outside the submersible. We found out rather quickly that either the machine was semi-broken or just most of the controls were turned off so you couldn't actually do much. Then two little boys came into the back and we decided to leave and let them try it out and learn for themselves that the thing didn't really do much of anything. We continued on downstairs and out to the USS Wisconsin. The Nauticus is built right beside the water and the battleship is moored right alongside the building with a walking bridge for visitors to walk on the deck of the ship. It was really neat to actually explore a battleship. It's part of the U.S. Navy's Inactive Fleet, but if the navy needs it, it needs to be ready to be used, so we couldn't go into any interior spaces, just walk along the outside. I thought it'd be really cool to go inside and see what a ship like that looks like inside, but alas, we couldn't. We did get to look in a few of the portholes and get an idea though. In any case, I liked being able to walk around the ship even though the wind was pretty crazy strong. After that we were pretty much done at the Nauticus and then we spent the last hour and a half or so of daylight at the mall right across the road from our hotel. We wondered if there'd be the whole Black Friday craze of people at the mall, but it just seemed like a normal mall day. Maybe all the rush was in the morning or something. I spent most of the time in the mall at Barnes & Nobles (a two-floor one!) reading Dr. Seuss books in the kids section. It was great. Have I mentioned yet that I love books? Right before we left the mall we stopped for food at the Cheesecake Factory Bakery Cafe and got sandwiches, salads and, of course, slices of cheesecake. We got the food to go and then walked back to our hotel for a yummy supper to start the Sabbath. Friday nights are awesome!