Spring Break: Wednesday

On Wednesday, we went to the USS Midway Museum in downtown San Diego. This is a huge aircraft carrier that you can tour from top to bottom.

When we got there, one of the docents told us we should do the tower tour early before it got too crowded, so we did that first. A docent takes you through the control tower high above the ship. Here are the girls at the top looking out on the flight deck.

There was a nice audio tour throughout the ship.

This is the navi-"gator"'s chair.

Of course, the girls each had to take a turn "steering" the ship!

We took all these steep ladder-like stairs up and down all over the ship. Also, the ceilings were not high, so I was hunching a lot.

On the flight deck, there were tons of planes.

This is one we got to go inside and there was a docent giving details on what the plane was used for.

We also walked through a few other planes they had set up for touring.

Something interesting I did not know is that all the people on the ship wear different colors depending on their role. That way it is easy to know what a person's job just by looking at them.

They had the cockpits of different things so the kids could sit inside. I think there was a game in this one that you had to fly the helicopter. They spent a lot of time in this one!

They had those VR rides to simulate flying in a fighter jet and Morgan just had to do it! She was so excited!

Matt was maybe a little less excited about it - ha!

Matt said Morgan was "flying" it at first. We saw them go upside down and then they did a barrel roll! That's the point that Matt said he took over the flying. Ha!

We watched the short film they had about the Battle of Midway (which is what the ship is named after). It was not what I expected and was surprisingly sad. It went into the personal lives of all the men that had died in the battle.

After the film, we continued our tour of the ship's quarters. This place is gigantic and we just kept following the arrows that said "Tour continues".

We got to see where the upper level soldiers would sleep.

And we got to tour the CIC (combat information center).

Then, we made it to the anchor room.

Here is where the new-bies slept. Not a lot of padding in their beds!

We saw where they would eat.

And where the laundry was done and the uniforms were ironed.

There was also a medical/dentist office on board the ship.

The cafeteria where the commanders ate was very nice!

Here we were below the water level of the ship. And this is where I started getting super claustrophobic. There was no quick way to get back to where we could see outdoors and I was so lost after all the snaking around through the corridors we had been doing. Plus, it didn't help that I couldn't fully stand up in many places. I ended up smacking my forehead super hard one time!

We put Avery in the brig!

We eventually made it back out to daylight! Whew! :)

We were starving so we walked to Seaport Village to grab some lunch. Morgan was excited to get onion rings! Avery was less excited that there were pigeons everywhere trying to eat her food. She hates birds.

Both girls are suckers for a carousel, so they had to ride this one!

We went back to the hotel to rest a bit and hit up the freshly baked cookies and of course, Happy Hour!

It was a little warmer, so we went down to the beach. The girls did some poses in the sun.

Morgan was not done swimming, so we went back to the pool!

We were super exhausted after this day, so we ordered food in from a place called Urban Plates.