April 30 – Battleship North Carolina

Today we did a loop drive down to the end of the cape, across on the ferry to Southport, up to Wilmington and the battleship. Then we went to the other side of the river to the Wilmington water front Riverwalk to have a late lunch and then home.

 

The ferry from Fort Fisher to Southport takes about 1/2 hour and costs a whole $5.

 

It runs every 45 minutes. The 10 o’clock one was almost full.

We got out and stood at the front the whole time.

At the very end of the cape is Bald Head Lighthouse. Normally we try and visit every close one but you have to take a paid boat ride to get there and other people have said it is not that pretty.

The pelicans seems to follow us. I saw a bunch of them do their crash dive into the water but I was never fast enough with the camera.

 

The drive up from the ferry to Wilmington was not very scenic.

The World War II battleship North Carolina is anchored on the Cape Fear River just across from downtown Wilmington. We paid our admission ($12 and $10) and headed up the gangplank.

You can pay extra for guided tours but almost everyone does the self guided tour. There are arrows and info boards telling you about all the stops and  where to go next.

We started on the deck at the back. Those 16 inch guns sure are massive. There is one turret at the rear and two at the front.

They launch and retrieve the sea plane via the crane in the background.

One great thing was that a lot of the knobs and dials actually still did something. You could rotate and aim this gun.

Heading forward.

Notice the kid in the seat at the anti aircraft gun. You could spin a wheel to raise and lower them.

The ship is bristling with guns everywhere. There were 10 of these 5 inch gun turrets. You could go inside one of them.

 

I wonder how they didn’t go deaf when they were firing.

It blew me away just how big the 16 inch gun turrets were.

You could climb inside them.

It was very cramped. Switches and dials everywhere.

Looking down on the breach.

Looking back from the bow.

I did a couple of photospheres from around here. Number 1 and Number 2.

Apparently there are a couple of alligators that are always swimming around the ship.

Charlie.

And Charlene.

You could go above the main deck and climb up some of the levels of this tower.

In the picture above you can see the protective flaps over the ports holes on the bridge.

Another great place where turning a knob or pulling a level usually did something like changing a dial or readout.

The view forward.

You were also allowed almost everywhere below decks. Most of it was very cramped. I expected the engine room to be massive but it was so filled with machinery that there was very little room to move around. Pictures just didn’t work in those small places.

You forgot that these things are really floating cities. Kitchens, stores, laundry, tailor, shoe repair, hospital, etc.

 

These are the targeting “computers” for the 16 inch guns. More walls of dials and switches.

You could go into the below deck parts of the 16 inch gun turrets where they loaded the powder and the shells.

The powder was stored in these air tight containers.

Once we finished the tour and were back up on deck the smell of oil was getting to us.

It took us about 2 1/2 hours to walk through. I thought is was very interesting and was amazed at how much of the ship you actually got to see,

We headed over to the waterfront area of Wilmington to grab some lunch.

Here is a view of the ship from across the river.

There is a boardwalk along the water with a selection of restaurants.

 

Jennie thought this one was interesting, where some of the tables got their own balcony.

We couldn’t find anything on the menu that thrilled us but we eventually found a place. After lunch we walked the rest of the boardwalk but it is only about 1 mile long. However, after all the walking and climbing on the ship, we were done for the day.

April 29 – Hiking Around Carolina Beach State Park

Lying in bed this morning I heard a loud bang from the roof of the RV. I ran outside to find that a 6 foot long, 4 inch thick piece of dead branch and fallen from a tree above the RV. Surprisingly there was no wind to cause it to happen. Thankfully It just grazed the side and didn’t do any damage. It would have hurt someone very badly if it had fallen on them. I told the rangers about it because there is still more of the dead limb up there but I haven’t seen any action yet.

We stayed local today and did a few of the trails inside the state park. We first walked from the campground to do the short loop called the flytrap trail. Then we did a longer loop to the Sugarloaf Dune to have lunch before heading back.

A few flower pictures to start.  The Spiderwort, or Widow’s Tears.

They grow some seriously large pine cones around here.

We did not expect to see Eastern Prickly Pear cactus.

You are supposed to be able to see some carnivorous plants such as Pitcher plants, Sundews and Venus Flytraps on the Flytrap Trail. We walked around it once and did not see any of them.

As we were about to head to the second loop we saw a ranger talking to a group of people. We joined them and sure enough he was giving a tour. It turns out that the plants are all on unmarked side trails, for some unknown reason.

First the pitcher plant. We only saw this one clump.

Then to the Venus Flytraps. The area in about a 70 mile radius circle around here is the only place in the world where they are native. In every other place people have grown them, they taken them from here, usually illegally.

Everyone thinks are large because of the movie A Little Shop of Horrors but they are tiny. Can you see them inside the red circles.

There are three hairs inside the trap. If two of them move then the trap will close. The ranger said that each trap will only close 3 times before it dies so you should never touch them.

This one was even tinier.

You can see all the dead traps on the ground.

This one had a bunch of insect digestion in progress.

Most of the area is very sandy but there is some swampy sections. The flytraps like to grow in between the two areas to get just the right amount of moisture.

The ranger said there are lots of snakes and turtles here but we didn’t see any.

There are these strange fir tree here, called Long Needle Pines.

They start out looking like tufts of long grass, like the bunch on the right, then sprout up with pom poms on the end of a spindly trunk. eventually they grown into full sized, somewhat normal looking, trees.

The lower loop was open, sandy and very hot. We were tempted to turn back a few times.

We passed by three ponds. I only took a picture of Lily Pond.

 

We finally made it to Sugarloaf Dune to lookout over the Cape Fear River.

It was a steep climb down to the river and we didn’t relish the thought of the hot climb back up so we had lunch up here. After lunch we decided that we couldn’t come this close and not go down.

We should have had lunch here. There was a strong breeze and it was much cooler.

Up at the lookout we had heard some clanging noises. Once we got down we saw this old barge.

It must still be in use because there was a new looking pressure treated pole on it.

Jennie saw a shell she just had to have.

After a while we headed back up the dune. You can see the lookout on the right.

 

Part way up we saw a side trail that took us to this swing that I just had to try. Jennie declined.

I took a run at it and then jumped on to swing out over the edge.

And then the seemingly endless long, hot trek back to the RV.

Altogether we did about 7.5 km which was a bit too long in this heat and our being out of hiking practise.