Fleet Week

I’m a bit late on doing the write up on this. For Memorial Day we traveled down to NYC and met up with Ron and his family. We walked over to the Intrepid and went to see Fleet Week.

By the time we made it up to the ships it was raining pretty well. We forgot our umbrellas but Ron, Liz and Steph brought two, which they kindly shared one with us.

It was nice to be able to get in for free. We waited in line for quite a while. Saw a police guy with a machine gun, definitely a deterrent in my eyes. Saw lots of navy people in their white uniforms. All Navy personnel were very cordial and nice. To get into the ship area, we had to go through a search of our pocket books and bags, along with a metal detector. You also had to turn off all cell phones. We all made it through just fine.

We went straight for the USS Iwo Jima since it was the largest ship docked (excluding the Intrepid). It was amazing being inside it, because you felt like you were in a building not a ship. Truly amazing what we can build, although sad that it’s for destructive purposes, but maybe that won’t be forever.

Inside we got to see some Humvees, their Amphibious attack bay. They had lots of personnel on hand to describe equipment and how it was used. On the second level was this great open area where they had lots of different country flags. And on the next level they let us up to, was helicopters, everyone wanted to sit in those, so I didn’t even try getting in. It made for some really interesting views of NYC from up top of the flight deck.

After there, we headed back to their place and then off to Ginger Toons for some Thai food. I got friend tofu as an appetizer, it was actually quite good. It was always interesting to walk around NYC and see the people and the culture, very different from being up in the woods. Thanks again to Ron, Liz and Steph for playing host to us for the day.