Battleship Memorial Park and the USS Alabama

I'd written a rambling post about the poverty I'd seen en route to Florida and in some areas of the Caribbean. I was going to have Mark give it a reality check to make sure that my rambling was at least coherent. But when I opened the post to read it to him, it wasn't there. It was the post I'd started with several days ago and had none of the edits I'd made yesterday. And since Blogger automatically saves your work every ten minutes, it was a bit odd. I'm going to take it as divine intervention. I assume I was not meant to share those thoughts with anyone BUT Mark. So we're going to move on to the next stop on our journey, the USS Alabama.

I've driven past it many times. You can't get to Florida from Dallas without going through Mobile - and that's where it's docked. I remember asking my son if he wanted to stop on the way to Florida years ago but he didn't and I wasn't going to make him. But Mark wanted to see it.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the Band of Brothers series, I'm not that much into war or weapons of war but I did find the visit interesting. It was like being transported back to the 1940s. It was set up to give you a good idea of what life was like on board the ship at that time.

Looking at it from the highway, you don't fully appreciate the size of it. I think it's far bigger than a cruise ship and of course, there's no Lido deck.

It was all going well until a group of school children turned up. Apparently they didn't have enough teachers and adult volunteers because those kids were just running amok. They were climbing on the hammocks, running up and down the stairways, and screaming at each other. We couldn't get away from the disrespectful little demons fast enough. When I was in school, field trips were meant to be learning experiences. I can't imagine what they learned from that trip.

But I learned that a new ship can be given the same name as an old ship, as long as the old ship is decommissioned.

Best advice - if you're going - go early. We arrived just as it opened and managed to have most of the tour finished before the children arrived. There was also a submarine and a number of aircraft to tour and view. We looked at some of the aircraft but decided to put the submarine off until another day.

Here are some photos.

And what does this tell you about Marines?