Visit to Chicago

We visited the Museum of Science and Industry a while back during a visit to Chicago.

Great place to visit and the weather was very nice. It was in the 80s during the day. I had visited the museum when I was a child and remembered the u-boat. It was outside and at the end I got a plastic replica of the u-boat made by a small machine.

Well, things have changed and yet stayed the same. The u-boat was given an exhibit hall in 2004 and what an exhibit it is. You walk down a series of hallways with documentation and images showing the scenes for World War II related to the battle in the Atlantic with u-boats and allied shipping.

You then come out of the hallway and are greeted with this large boat in a very large room. It is like a holding pen with its concrete shell to protect against bombings. Watch the movie Das Boot to get an idea of what this facility was like.

We got our tickets a head of time on the Internet which was good since the tours had sold out for the day when we got there. We had a good tour guide who had some pretty good jokes. Too bad we could not take any pictures because the guide said people were selling them on the internet and the boat was now copyrighted. It was neat to see the inside and it is hard to believe that almost 60 people had to live there for months at a time.

The exhibit has a lot to offer with more displays around the submarine with some of them interactive. It was too bad we did not have time to study all the exhibits but we had spent time looking at other things at the museum like the trains, the Boeing 727, the chemistry and energy exhibits, and eating lunch. I wish I had time to look at the geology exhibit.

I took a picture of the dents in the submarines nose. I wonder how those dents got there.

At the end of the U-505 exhibit do not forget to look at the monitor on the ceiling that shows how they moved the submarine into its underground chamber.

Fort Morgan Beach

Here are some pictures I took at Fort Morgan beach. Not a lot of people around but it was pretty hot outside at the time. Sea birds were following a school of fish that was being driven onto the beach by another school of larger fish. I took a lot of pictures but not all of them were in focus of the birds flying around.

Visit to Fort Morgan, Alabama

Recently, we took a vacation to Fort Morgan, Alabama with family and enjoyed the beach, food and sites of this Gulf of Mexico city. I was amazed at all the drilling platforms in the Gulf we could see from the beach, especially at night.

I was able to make some drawings for my young nephews with the paper and crayons on hand. Our first image is a wake up picture with a sun rising over the ocean which has a sea serpent, shark (complements of my nephew), and fish swimming in it.

This next picture entitled "Fun At the Beach" which shows a picture of the house we rented which was called "Beach Escape". The image of the house is pretty accurate but the surroundings were created with artistic license. The beach house was on a street that was in sight of the beach and the ocean was about 200 meters from the house.

I had brought a bottle of sparkling grape juice and used it to encourage my nephew to eat his vegetables during meals. So I told him he could have some "magic" grape juice in a glass. This image shows how the grape juice made to when it gets to the glass.

Here is an image to encourage my nephews to go to bed. It is a caterpillar sleeping with the moon and some flowers around.

Pictures from Myrtle Beach

This weekend I had a chance to look at some pictures on the camera memory card. The picture of the flower was taken in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was in a planter on the patio of a hotel that was next to the beach.

It has such a vibrant red color that stood out on that windy, overcast day.





The picture to the left shows the overcast weather over a pretty much deserted beach in September 2005. Myrtle Beach is a nice place but it really is geared to golfers. It is a nice place to fly into though the airport is small and not very busy. After flying out of New York or Atlanta and having to sit on the runway, their airport was a pleasant change.




Here is another picture of a flower that was reddish-pink. I liked the contrast of the flower to the rest of the planter.