Battleship!

2025-04-09
Mobile AL and Houston TX

I started the day at the USS Alabama, a South Dakota class battleship. That means it's a bit smaller than the Iowa Class ships like the USS New Jersey, but that made her more maneuverable. The boat is just bristling with guns, from the 16 inch main guns down to .50 caliber machine guns; the right projectile for the right task. In addition to walking the deck and climbing to the bridge, you can explore the turrets (and hope you're fairly short!) and also below decks. A battleship crew ranges from about 1800 during peace time up to 2500 during wartime, so it's essentially a small town. As such, it needs all the things you'd find in a town: butcher, dentist, barber, post office, store, jail, etc. The below-deck tour let you wander around through all that, and ponder that many of the sailors had jobs similar to yours. Occasionally I'd get a bit lost trying to find my way out of an area; sometimes you have to go up, around, and back down just to go over. I don't know if that was as true when she was in service; they do have a lot of places blocked off.

Everything a town needs, including a blacksmith's shop

Anti-aircraft guns along with something they wish they had in 1945: A nod to the Alabama summers. There were a fair number of AC units scattered about for the tourists.

They also had a WWII sub on display, the USS Drum. The old diesel electric boats are really small; I can't imagine living on them for months at a time. On this tour, there is zero chance of getting lost. There is just one central passageway from one end to the other.

The bridge. Not much space to put people.

They also had a number of planes, tanks, and even a few boats you could look at as well. After touring the area, I headed off to Bellingrath Gardens which was maybe 30 minutes away.

Bellingrath Gardens is an old estate and gardens. They do a good job of keeping up the landscaping, but overall the vibe didn't appeal to me. They had a large number of fabric-on-metal sculptures of things natural, mythical, and unnatural that in my mind became the attraction (or maybe distraction). I was hoping for something more natural. Also, my engineering side was a bit annoyed at the path system. More than once I wandered into a maintenance area because of an unmarked path or had to backtrack because a path was arbitrarily closed (you could get to both sides of the closure on open paths). And several large areas had only one way in and out, so you had to retrace your steps to get out, plus the single path was easily missed in some cases. I'd give it 3 out of 5, but if you like the sculptures then it may be for you.

Typical sculpture, though this one makes me shudder. Squirrels are the juvenile delinquents of the animal world.

Another sculpture. There were hundreds of them.

Sorry, the flowers weren't labeled, so your guess is as good as mine.

They have a nice swamp you get to traverse. Boardwalks keep you from tracking mud into the gift shop.

The original plan was to hole up about an hour west of Mobile, but I was done fairly early so I decided to drive a bit further. After about five hours I was still doing well, so when I stopped for dinner I booked the hotel in Houston and finished there for the night. This effectively shortened my trip by a day.

I passed right by LSU on the way west. LSU uses a real tiger for its mascot, unlike Clemson who puts a guy in a tiger-ish suit. The tiger's name is always Mike. They rename tigers to Mike VI, Mike VII (who is the current one), etc. I've always said that it's fine to rename a cat because they can ignore a new name as easily as the old one.

While most of the trip was in Louisiana, I was really surprised at the number of police on the highway for a Wednesday. I don't think I saw less that 50 state troopers (although a few were empty cars used as decoys). I'm not sure how much speeding people were doing since I only saw two writing tickets. It's not the end of the month so it shouldn't be quota time yet.