Vacation & Aircraft Carrier

After a short drive around the historic area of Charleston, we headed over the bridge to tour the USS Yorktown.

Here we are ... about to go aboard. (I'm getting better at selfies, no?)

Jem, getting a good look at the huge Essex-class aircraft carrier. It's just like the one he served on in the Navy.  The carriers of today are even bigger.

My hero, on the upper deck.  Jem worked on the flight deck as an "ordie,"  an aviation ordinanceman, also known as a red-shirt.  He loaded bombs onto the airplanes.

When not loading bombs, they hung out in this area.

This guy overhead Jem telling me about the flight deck, and asked a lot of questions.

 Sign on the flight deck, a very dangerous place to work.

This is the shop where they worked on the bombs.

We toured the combat control area, and this guy has to write everything backward on a glass wall so that the people on the other side can read it.  I thought this was very interesting and sent it by text to my eight-year-old grandson. He thinks it's great fun to write things backward.  No, he's not dyslexic or anything like that.  He's just extremely intelligent and invents games about writing words and number pairings backward.

 We toured the other areas below deck, including the sleeping quarters.  Pretty spartan, huh?  I asked Jem how they could sleep in such an uncomfortable place, and he said, "We were so tired, we could sleep on the floor if we had to. . . and sometimes did."

 The aircraft carrier is also a museum and had a display about the U.S. Medal of Honor.  Jem's great-great-grandfather, Patrick Golden, received this medal for bravery and actions against the Apache Indians during the Indian Campaign between August and October of 1868.

The big banner below was on the wall, and I like these words.  They are so true, and I am grateful to all who have been, and are currently, willing to lay their lives down for the people of our country.

We loved this big banner on the side of the carrier.  We stand for our country, our flag, and our national anthem, and hope you do, too.

We were hoping to take our eight year old grandson with us on this tour, but it didn't hapen.  Maybe next year.  We know he would love it because he loves airplanes.

Next post will be about our visit to the Biltmore Castle in Ashville.

Blessings to you, dear Gail-Friends!

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