This weekend Graham and I went to Charleston, South Carolina on a camping trip with Graham's Boy Scout Pack. The USS Yorktown was our destination. It is a WWII and Vietnam aircraft carrier, that has been turned into a museum.
In all honesty this trip is the reason the Graham joined the Boy Scouts. Angie had taken him the first meeting and was about to decide not to join, because it was a dad thing, run by the dads. Plus she was going to have to sell $300 in Boy Scout popcorn! BUT as the meeting was coming to a close, the leader announced that the pack would be taking a trip to camp out on the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. Grahams eyes lit up, she signed the forms, wrote the check, got the popcorn papers. (I hope you all liked popcorn for Christmas, there will be more next year) Since, I have been the one to take over Scout duties, and have enjoyed the duty very much.
Graham is a tiger scout and one of the younger members of the pack. I was never a scout, am one of younger and more inexperienced members of the pack dad's. None the less, I always call the JAG Corps own Eagle Scout, Pete Meno, to check and see what I should be doing before a pack event. This day, Pete did our taxes, told us what to pack, and only charged one meal of tuna noodle casserole (1st Friday of Lent). This aid and friendship is a true bargain.
On this trip there were to be about 70 parents and scouts on the roster, we were to join 3 or 4 other packs to take over the ship. I drove G to Charleston in about 3 hours on Saturday. We met the pack and went on the ship.
The first thing that struck us was how big this ship is. The deck is as big as 3 football fields, and the ship has about 8 stories from bridge to engine room. They then took us to our bunks. Given the size of our ship, our "state room" was very small. All 70 of us slept in a room that consisted of bunks stacked end to end and 4 high. The space was barely big enough to slide in and out of. WWII Navy life may not have been my thing.
While on the ship, we spent the morning going up to the flight deck, and checking out the pilot’s area and other museum displays. We learned that this was the second ship named Yorktown to fight in WWII, the first was sunk at Midway. Of course there are hours of Navy artifacts and history to look at and learn. There is also an additional museum dedicated to the Metal of Honor recipients that is very cool.
In the afternoon we took a ferry out to the mouth of the harbor and toured Fort Sumter, the location of the first shots of the Civil War. The ferry ride was by far Graham's favorite part of this day. He stood, in the wind, at the front rail on the ferry the entire time. He watched the container ships, and the waves wash by. He was almost blue with cold by the time I forced him to come in the lounge area. The Fort itself was one of the most shelled areas on earth by the end of the war, and there is only about one fourth of it left. This did not dampen my curiosity and enthusiasm for the experience, and the tour was great. Graham liked the big cannons.Later in the evening we eat dinner in the ships mess, and watched movies in the theater. This was all very cool. Graham thought that the Chef Boyardee pasta was some of the best he had ever had.
After a day of walking on the ships steel floor, Graham was out like a light during the movie, and got carried to bed. I would have paid to have been able to sleep like that, but such joy was not my fate.
The next day, the breakfast meal was again one of the best Graham had ever had, and we spent some more time looking at planes on the flight deck.
Charleston is one of the South's most beautiful cities, and my favorite of the cities, I have seen(I am still looking to visiting San Francisco. The Yorktown is a great excursion if you get the chance. Way to go scout leaders, this was cool.
