Bremerton--A Navy Town

We flew up to Bremerton last Friday morning. Bremerton is the home of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. They repair and decommission ships there. We saw four aircraft carriers including the Kitty Hawk that was just decommissioned on this trip. Since we had been there last, they had moved the Naval Museum to a new building so we went to see it. There have been parks built along the shipyard and sound with wonderful water fountains and sculptures to look at. The ones in the picture are really cool--they reminded me of submarines and would have huge gushes of water as if the sub was breaching. We also went on a tour of the USS Turner Joy which is a frigate that was involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The tour was conducted by five former naval chiefs and officers which took two hours and was excellent. Our tour guide was a 1961 Naval Academy graduate that served on the Turner Joy's sister ship so he knew a lot about this particular type of ship. We learned so much about various aspects of running the ship, protocols, and living conditions. The next morning we drove up to Keyport to see the Naval Undersea Museum there. I had been there with the boys several years ago. It is also a very nice museum. I found the life of a submariner's family to be very interesting--all the secrecy and limited amounts of communication were especially surprising. I didn't realize how restrictive their lives actually are. After we saw the museum, it was time to head back to the Bremerton Airport and make our flight up to Port Townsend. An interesting side note--when we were flying home, we saw a submarine making its way out to sea. That was really cool.