Haven’t even started work yet and we have a day off. How cool is that? We decided to check out Wilmington, about 40 miles from here.
First step was to find parking. Downtown areas are not usually friendly to oversize vehicles, especially historic downtown areas. But I found some street parking several blocks away from the riverwalk and we unloaded the bikes and rode them in the remainder of the way.
We also sought out something to eat. Hopefully at a place that wasn’t part of a chain. A couple places we stopped at had wait times, as a lot of other people had the same idea we did. We ended up at Front Street Brewery, housed in a Civil War-era building. Great burger.
Directly across the Cape Fear River is the Battleship USS North Carolina. Most of the ship is open to the public so we spent nearly three hours stepping through narrow hatches and navigating tight stairways to see what made this ship tick.
Unfortunately, one of the areas I wanted most to see, the engine room, was closed because a raccoon had somehow gotten down there and was spotted eating out of one of the trash cans this morning. They closed off the area to prevent any human contact with this animal until they could catch it.
But it was interesting to crawl up inside the 16-inch gun turrets, see the powder magazines, the radio rooms and even the kitchen, baker’s room and laundry. It gives you a new appreciation for the magnitude of running an operation like that with over 2000 people on board when you see a recipe for pie dough that calls for 200 pounds of flour and 3 1/2 buckets of water.
The brochures suggested two hours for a tour, we took almost three. Well worth the time to see.
Since we were in a more major city, we took care of some laundry and grocery shopping on the way home as the town of Lake Waccamaw does not have a laundromat.
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