San Diego & the USS Midway!

After being home for a total of 51 hours I hopped on a plane to San Diego, California. I was headed there for the National Education Association's Representative Assembly (RA). I've been becoming more and more involved in our union in Anchorage and this was my first time attending the national gathering. I've been San Diego before, but it is a lovely city and before the real business got going I had a chance to visit the USS Midway, the aircraft carrier that is on display in San Diego Harbor. San Diego is home to a HUGE naval base, so this was no surprise. After watching the PBS show "Carrier" I had a real interest in seeing one up close and personal.
This was the view of the harbor from my hotel room. My room was on the 25th floor, which was really high up, I actually got a little vertigo the first time I looked down!
This was the view towards town from my room. My room was midway through an elliptical shaped building, so I got a view in each direction. What a great city!
Here's part of the Midway. It is a HUGE ship! So there was no way to capture the entire ship in one photo.
Just next to the Midway is this great statue of "The Kiss", that famous picture of the sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square at the end of WWII. There was also a tribute statue to Bob Hope, but I didn't get a photo of that.
Here I am in the brig! The USS Midway has this self-guided audio tour that you go to all the stops and then listen to what is said about that part of the ship.
Here is the laundry room. The USS Midway when it was running did something in the neighborhood of 6,400 pounds of laundry a day! That is more laundry than I want to do! And all of those clothes had to be pressed too...yuck!
There are four different dining rooms on the USS Midway. There is the general seamen's dining hall, the airmen's dining hall, the petty officer's dining hall, and the officer's dining hall. In the petty officer's dining hall they also had this. It is a table for one with a red rose in honor of the POW's and MIA's. Apparently, all carriers have one of these tables. I thought that was nice.
Here on the main deck you could sit in the seat of an F-15. It is an eject-able seat. At this point in the tour they had a little video of Top Gun stuff and played "Highway to the Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins.
Part of the main deck also had a glass floor to show you the depth of the carrier. My friend Pam, who went on the tour with me was afraid to step on the glass floor.
This is the view from one end of the flight deck looking back at the city. As I stated before, the USS Midway is HUGE! It was a great tour and I'm really glad I went!

Silver Falls State Park

One other thing we did while visiting on the farm in Oregon was we went to Silver Falls State Park. Uncle Dave took us there, it is near the little town of Silverton, Oregon home of the nation's first transsexual mayor. The town is charming and we had a great lunch there! Then on to the park, which is beautiful! We only got to see a small portion of it. Apparently there are seven different waterfalls and there is a trail you can take through the park to see all of them. We only had time to see the main falls, which was fantastic! Here are some pictures:
Here's the main falls. The trail actually winds around behind the falls, which is really cool! I had not ever gotten to go behind a waterfall before, so I was excited about that!
Here's a picture from behind the waterfall. This certainly wasn't the most powerful falls we'd ever seen, particularly after going to Niagra Falls in '07, but we couldn't go behind those falls. Every place offers it's own something special, it's own beauty -- at least that's what I've found.
Here we are on the other side of the falls. Uncle Dave was kind enough to take a photo of the two of us together, which we really appreciate!
One of the things we love about the Pacific Northwest is the tall, tall trees! Trees can get really tall in some parts of Alaska, but it is just not the same as those tall cedar trees in Washington and Oregon. As you can see, we had a great day - it was sunny and warm!

Okay, So I'm going to try to catch up...

There is still a lot from the summer to write about, and I haven't done it. The summer is now over, in teacher speak, and heck, I'm wondering where it went. But then I look at the photos and remember that I've been crazy busy! So, we left off in Tacoma at the end of June. After that we went to the farm in Molalla. I've written about this location many times and how much we love it there. I only have a few photos to share this time.
First, sunset on the farm. I never tire of how beautiful it is there!
Next, skeet shooting! Having 5 acres allows for things like skeet shooting. Here is Dave in the foreground and Tucker further back. They look like pros with the shotguns!
Then there's me... In my defense this was only the second time in my existence discharging a firearm of any kind. My stand isn't correct and I guess I may be lucky that I didn't hurt my back! I did hit my first 3 out of 5 clay pigeons though! Not bad for a girl who has no idea what she's doing! I did develop a nice bruise from the shooting though...oh well.
Here is my "Sarah Palin has nothin' on me!" picture. It was a lot of fun! As I said before, we always have such a good time down on the farm!