I tried to sleep in but woke up at 7:30am anyway. I decided to rent a car from Enterprise for the day since I wanted to make it to the USS North Carolina, Fort Fisher, and the serpentarium today as well as a show at the Brown Coat Pub and Theater tonight. Public transit here sucks so the 30 bucks to rent a car is worth it.

I started out at the USS North Carolina which was amazing. The ship went through WW2 protecting aircraft carriers (as well as other missions) and survived many battles. I’d have never made it in the Navy though because I’d hit my head all the time on the low ceilings.

Here is me firing a turret.

This is where I would have worked — the coding room. That machine is an Electric Cipher Machine (ECM) and was used to send and receive encrypted messages.

After the ship I drove down to Fort Fisher but it got really foggy all of a sudden. There was a guy taking his bike out onto the wall in the fog which was crazy to me. That’s him way out there.

There is a ferry that takes you across the water to Southport that I would have crossed on with my bike had I stayed in a hotel in downtown Wilmington. Sadly, I couldn’t bike that far yesterday so I’m skipping it. I still ended up seeing it though which was pretty cool. This is me on the wall looking back towards land.

I also made it to the aquarium at Fort Fisher which was surprisingly awesome. I didn’t know it even existed and it looked pretty nondescript but it was a really well managed museum. Here’s two guppies hugging each other (or banging? Can’t tell)

Here’s some fish swimming upstream.

Finally I made it to the serpentarium downtown and holy crap that place was fun. So many terrifying snakes and reptiles were there staring at me like I was a tasty snack. The saltwater crocodile was probably the scariest to me because it was accompanied with a story about how a group of them essentially devoured 80 Japanese soldiers who were retreating from battle. Look up the Ramree crocodile massacre if you want to read about it. Here’s one of them.

Also enjoyed some of the other reptiles namely the black mamba and the iguana.

I drove back to the hotel and am doing laundry. Heading back into town to grab dinner and watch a show at the Brown Coat Pub and Theater, returning the car, taking a taxi back, then getting some rest. Heading about 65 miles to Myrtle Beach tomorrow in what looks to be shitty weather.