The remainder of our 4th of July weekend passed with no trouble and was completely painless. We began the 4th with a free pancake breakfast put on by the campsite staff where we were staying. We met a wonderful couple and we enjoyed talking with them. We discovered that the husband was the senior chaplain for the State penitentiary and share some very interesting stories.
Shortly after a filling, FREE breakfast we packed up the car and headed to the USS North Carolina, a US Battleship turned into a war memorial. I had heard cool things about the Battleship but did not comprehend how awe inspiring it would be. It was MASSIVE!!! It took us around 3 hours to see everything in the ship. We learned all about how the sailors lived on this Battleship during WWII as well as how the ship would run during battle. Ryan was able to try his hand at a 22mm anti-aircraft gun, unloaded of course. (He freely admits he would have been unable to hit anything from that post. However, awesome was the only word he was able to say for a couple of minutes afterwards.) We learned how it took a minimum of four people to run the gun and about each job that was required. We were able to go inside one of the big 16 inch cannons. They explained that each bullet, though only 5 feet tall, would weigh more than a large car and could be shot over several miles. I am so glad that I never have to actually work in one of those guns. When we were in the gun, there were only half of the people in the gun that it took to run it, with air conditioning, yet it is stifling hot. I cannot even imagine what the men that actually ran the gun had to go through.
We learned how much effort it took just to run the ship for the sailors. Not only were there cooks, but there was an entire kitchen for just the bakery, a barber shop, a shoe shop, a post office, an ice cream stand, an infirmary, a print shop, and everything else a regular small town would need. One of my favorite parts was the barber shop. I always assumed that the barber shop would only be open for part of a day or only on certain days, however, it was open for 12 hours a day every day and was jam packed every day. I realized that this would have to be simply to serve the 2-3,000 men on the ship at a time. (Of course, capitalism lives on even during a war, and many men mentioned in their diaries that haircuts were better the larger their illegal tips were.)
The Battleship certainly was an eye-opening experience. Ryan put it nicely when he said that the it was "pure awesomeness."
After the amazing tour of the Battleship Ryan and I drove back to Cary where we listened to the North Carolina Symphony in an open amphitheater while eating dinner, a left over tin foil dinner I accidentally squashed in Ryan's sweatshirt. Following the free concert there were amazing fireworks over a lake. We were within 100 yards from where the fireworks were being set off so it was extremely loud and very bright. Again I think Ryan puts it nicely when he said "it was sensory overload." Even though we were temporarily deaf it was worth every minute and we had a blast, but we did feel bad for the ducks that took off like a shot after the first test firework. I have never seen birds move so fast. I would have to say that this was one of my favorite 4th of July celebrations.
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