Fort Fisher Aquarium and USS North Carolina

After we got off the ferry we headed straight to the Aquarium.  Cost was $9.95 each for seniors.  It was open 9-5 Mon-Fri.

The first part was supposed to be natural habitat for local animals.  It was very warm and humid. You could see the misters go off about every 20 mins.

They had 4 normal alligators and one albino alligator.  The write-up said this albino was one of only 5 in captivity.

All the alligators were fairly good size.  Next we went into the Ocean marine part of the aquarium.

This is the best picture of a really small jellyfish.  We did not take pictures of other fish.  We are learning we need to take more pictures.

This display of a shark's jaw was as we were leaving. This is a mock up of a prehistoric megalodon shark jaw.  The megalodon probably preceded the great white shark.  Scary to think how big the whole shark was.  By the time we left the aquarium it was 1:30 pm and we were hungry.  We decided to skip Fort Fisher itself and look for food.  We looked for a place that was recommended but could not find it.  Where we ate was terrible.  It was 2:30 pm by the time we finished and we had not made it to the battleship North Carolina yet so we decided to head into Wilimgton.
  My friend Roxanne wanted to visit this ship so the following is dedicated to her.

As we were walking up to the USS North Carolina we saw this huge propeller.

Standing near the propeller and turning towards the ship this is what we see.  This was the first ship to catapult air planes off the bow.  This was also the first battleship with twin rudders. This battleship was state of the art when it was built.

As we walked the plank onto the ship you can see the crane used to lift the plane and put it on the track.

Here is Tic manning one of the many 20mm guns.

Bigger guns. I think these were called 5 inch guns for the diameter of the bullets.  One man for each gun but it took one man to maneuver up & down and another to maneuver side to side.
Looking head on at these BIG guns was impressive.  These had 16 inch diameter cylinders.

 Here is a little about the "Big Guns".  It took 6 bags of gun powder to shoot off a bullet.

Here is one of the "bullets" for the "Big Gun".  It is just displayed here.  They never actually sat on deck.

There were 6 Big Guns in the bow and 3 at the stern.  Look at the size of the anchor in the foreground.

Tic sat on it to give a perspective of its massive size.  There were 2 of these.  Again, they were being displayed on deck.  They never actually sat on deck.  Those chain links must of weighted 70-80 lbs each link.  Someone told us the ship weighed 36,000 tons.  It was massive and very impressive.

This picture was taken from a porthole in the bridge.  The bridge looked like a lookout room to me.  This ship housed 2300 people.  There was every kind of occupation you can think of to take care of the ship and all the people.  VERY IMPRESSIVE.