We spent this morning taking a tour of the USS Midway. Larry and I did it a few years ago but Toni and Jane had never see it before. Seeing the size of the ship, etc in person is so much more dramatic than seeing aircraft carriers on TV or in movies. The flight deck is the length of 3 football fields. The length of "runway" that the planes take off on is so short and seeing the cables they hook when landing is hard to believe. The above picture, taken from the flight deck, is the part of the ship that is above the flight deck. The docent who explained the take off process to us was a pilot in Viet Nam where he was shot down and spent 6.5 years in a Hanoi prison. He didn't tell us but another docent did. One of the highlights for us was seeing the USS Carl Vinson which is an aircraft carrier that is currently active. It is across the bay from the Midway at the Naval Station in Coronado getting a new paint job. The Vinson is the ship that the Seals took off from on the mission to get Bin Laden. It is also where they returned to with him body and the ship that he was "buried at sea" from. Since the ship is active, there were small gun ships zipping around the bay guarding it. Very interesting!
Next stop was the Hotel Del Coronado where we had lunch. I had never been to the hotel before and since it is so famous, we decided to go there for lunch. Well.....what a disappointment! My single glass of Diet Coke was $4.75 with no refills. Horribly overpriced and the food was not that great - at least that was the opinion of all three of us. However, the view of the ocean was wonderful. Jane and I walked out to the water and the sand was quite warm - almost plain hot on our bare feet. And of course it was further out to the water than we thought it was when we started so our feet were toasty by the time we got back to grass. Below is a sand castle that someone had built - actually a village of houses with amazing detail. The building in the background is the hotel.
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