It was a pretty good time, most of the ship you just explored on your own, but there is a guided tour for the command center of the ship. One warning here: there are some pretty tight and steep staircases you must ascend/descend. If that could be an issue for you, you might want to skip this part.
Captain's Quarters are pretty nice
The only bad thing was the school group that was exploring the ship as well. There was one little girl we continually ran across who decided it was a cool thing to act afraid of all the 'mannequins' and scream real loud if she saw one. Yes little girl, so cool.
Yes, maybe a little frightening. But not 'shriek so loud you ruin everyone's hearing in a 5 mile radius frightening'
There were a couple planes available for photo ops
I always wanted to be a fighter pilot when i was little. I think I coulda handled this.
And this.
I think we tried to wrap up around noon since our flight was at 2. I highly recommend the USS Midway as a good pre-airport activity, it is about a 5 minute drive away. Brian was interested in one shirt in the gift shop, it was a green button down with some of the popular air force pictures you could see on the planes (wow, that was a good description), but it was $70! So we passed.
Goodbye and Good Luck USS San Diego!
We found a gas station along the way to top the car off, then we dropped Lil' Miss off at her home and took the shuttle to the airport. I was so happy to see the airport! Mostly because I hadn't eaten anything today yet, but yeah.
Random city shot
Also, thank goodness we brought an empty suitcase, and thank goodness Southwest is an awesome airline that allows 2 free checked bags each. Because of the purchase of a new sleeping bag and all the souvenirs, we barely got everything to fit and ended up having: a giant checked suitcase that was right at 50 pounds, a garment bag that we checked for the flight back because we didn't care anymore if our good clothes got wrinkled, a 40 or so pound sports duffel bag, and a stuffed to the gills yet lighter duffel. Then we carried on a stuffed backpack, my red Puma bag and a grocery bag with breakable souvenirs. Ugh.
We had about an hour wait til we got to board and take off, during which time we had some very over priced quiznos. Yay over priced airport food!
I think we can see our hotel!
I love looking out the windows of planes at the landscapes, I think its very interesting
We switched planes in Phoenix, we were only going to have about an hour layover but it got pushed up to around 2 or 2.5. Only bad thing about that is we were originally scheduled to get into Columbus a little after midnight, now we wouldn't be back until 1 or 2 am. Ugh.
We spent the flight watching Game of Thrones and trying to sleep...I was exhausted yet I still couldn't sleep because of vacation keyed up ed ness. I should have brought some Nyquil or something.
The plane landed in good old Columbus around 1:30 am. We got a taxi for the short trip to my friend's apartment where my car had been safely living. I think the taxi was around $30 with tip. My friend dropped us off on our way to vacation, but there was no way I was even going to try to stretch the goodwill of my friends to pick us up after 1 am on a Wednesday night.
We were finally home! We stumbled into bed with all our bags and souvenirs and the other detritus of the trip strewed around us. It had been a great time.
UP NEXT: Nothing. Just an empty void of working and surviving until my next vacation. Hahah. But no really, I will write a vacation wrap up post.
QUOTEABLE QUOTES: 'Are they any scary fake people in this next room?!' 'Blood curdling shriek'. Ugh, little girl, get over it.
LOWLIGHTS OF DAY 10: the amazing shrieking wonder mentioned above
HIGHLIGHTS OF DAY 10: the pride all the retired military volunteers working on the Midway showed toward the new USS San Diego