The 75th anniversary of D-Day is fast approaching. So on our drive from Houston through Lake Charles, Louisiana, it seemed natural to stop to see the USS Orleck Naval Museum. This Destroyer was commissioned in 1945 in the shipyard in nearby Orange, Texas. It saw duty in Korea and Vietnam before being given to the Turkish navy. They donated it back to a non-profit organization to display.
Wonder what drones were like in 1963? Yeah, really; one is featured here.
So it’s no secret that I’m a baseball fan. We got to spring training games in Phoenix to start the preseason. After a wedding in Boston, got to a game at Fenway Park for Mariners versus Red Sox. Cold, cold, cold day for baseball… with rain the whole game. An Astros game in Houston (no rain, but Minute Maid Park has a roof anyway). And football and baseball with one of the Houston grandsons.
Because they were built by indigenous peoples before written history, America’s earliest cities are often ignored. In Arizona there are thousands of these cities and villages. Many are protected in our National Parks. But we visited one today that is a city park, Besh Ba Gowah Archaeological Park and Museum in Globe, Arizona.
I categorized this post as “Travel” because we had to travel for 23 minutes from home to reach the Deer Valley Petroglyph Preserve. It’s run by Arizona State University and preserves over 1500 petroglyphs. A petroglyph is an image formed by chipping away “desert varnish” that covers rocks. It’s not a hieroglyph which is a language. It’s not a petrograph which is painted on a rock surface.
We returned to our old stomping grounds in Cave Creek where the public library provides a great panorama of the area. Today that panorama includes snow. Arizona actually gets a lot of snow, just not here in “The Valley of the Sun” (Phoenix and surroundings). Northern Arizona and eastern Arizona have ski areas with fairly long seasons. And the cliche is that you can water ski and snow ski on the same day.
We visit the Musical Instrument Museum (The MIM) occasionally. We tried to visit yesterday, but the parking lot was filled to overflowing when we arrived. Our company blamed the rain. We blamed the darn snowbirds. Anyway, we arrived shortly after they opened today to no lines.
One of my recommended travel apps let us down this trip: iExit. It found a Stuckey’s for gas and snacks, but missed Buc-ees. Buc-ees is like a truck stop that does not allow trucks. Inexpensive gas and a convenient store that’s more of a supermarket for stuff. Stuff like lunch, sugared nuts, all kinds of candy, crawfish cleaners, trail cameras, and more.
It is remotely possible that I post too much about The Thing. So this is the last post about The Thing. But, the next time you take Interstate 10 east from Tucson you must stop there. As I said last post, the new museum is worth the stop even if there were no Dairy Queen there.
When in South Florida, visit the South Florida Museum (and manatee rescue). It’s in downtown Bradenton and features a planetarium, an aquarium, and an eclectic collection of artifacts.
Fort Bragg is near Fayetteville, North Carolina which is home to the U. S. Army Airborne & Special Forces Museum. This tells a broader picture of airborne troops including paratroopers and glider men.