USS Iowa

 

Yesterday while Jenn and Susan signed and sold books at the convention in downtown Los Angeles, I drove down to San Pedro to see the USS Iowa. The Iowa is one of four battleships that were built during WWII and is bigger than the USS Alabama, the other battleship I have toured. It’s also more modern, as it was updated for use in the Cold War. 

I spent about two hours going through the ship, so it wasn’t as good of value as the Reagan museum, since they both cost $30. It did have several videos the told about different aspects of the ship, although I believe more of the Alabama was available to tour and had better descriptions about the areas of the ship. 

After lunch at the hot dog stand on the ship, I walked down to the Los Angeles Maritime Museum. This building used to be where ferries to Terminal Island loaded. Now it kind of tells the history of the Port of Los Angeles. It’s a fairly small museum, but admission is only $5. It’s not well organized, and there are lots of models of ships.

This morning we checked out of the Biltmore and drove down to the Grand Californian for a couple of days at the Disneyland resort. Since we started staying here twenty years ago, the trees in front have gotten so big they block out the hotel. We had a one-bedroom villa on the first floor.

We met Bryan and his friends and spent a couple of hours in the parks. It was fairly busy so we didn’t ride much, mostly looked around and snacked.  For dinner we all went to a BBQ place in downtown Anaheim. It was pretty good.