Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

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Living in the port city of Portsmouth Virginia, this week’s assignment of “water” was easy! I just popped downtown and walked around a bit while the boys were having their book club at the library.

This is a shot across the Elizabeth River, looking at Norfolk, Virginia. You can also see part of the world-famous Norfolk Naval Shipyard in this shot. We’ve got two celebrities in port this week!
From this little dock you can take a double-decker ferry across the river for just $1 per person. It’s a great ride, as you go past the shipyard and get to see all of the big impressive naval ships being restocked and repaired. It takes about 10 minutes to get across the water, and the ferry runs every half hour.

I love the weathering on this.

Here’s one of our celebrities: The USS Iwo Jima!

It’s hard to get an idea of just how massive this ship is from the picture.  Her flight deck spans a full 2.2 acres, being 819 feet long and 119 feet wide. She boasts a full 600-bed hospital with 6 operating rooms, three dental operating rooms, x-ray rooms, labs, patient wards, and even a blood bank. You can find more facts on her armament and the vehicles she carries here.  Standing on the other side of this little dock, a football player with a good arm could easily toss a ball onto her flight deck; I love being able to get so close to impressive ships like this.

Here’s a shot of her from the air while in deployment; check out all of those helicopters! (Photo courtesy of the Navy)

 
The Iwo Jima has served as President Bush’s flagship, and is only the second ship to be presented with the flag of the President.

A note on her history from her website:

On August 31, 2005, IWO JIMA was sortied to the Gulf of Mexico to provide disaster relief and to conduct support operations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. IWO JIMA sailed up the Mississippi River to the city of New Orleans to directly support relief operations and act as the central command center for all federal, state, and local disaster recovery operations.

During this critical period, IWO JIMA also served as the region’s only fully functional air field for helicopter operations, conducting over one thousand flight deck operations; provided hot meals, showers, drinking water, and berthing to thousands of National Guardsmen and relief workers; provided medical services, including first aid and surgical services, for disaster victims; and conducted clean-up operations in the city and suburbs of New Orleans.

Also in port this week is the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier CVN-71, aka the USS Theodore Roosevelt. I couldn’t get a shot of her, though. Maybe I’ll take the boys on the ferry this weekend and see if we can get a shot. Here’s the little ferry that you can ride across the river - note the flags painted on the Iwo Jima behind her. The words under the flag say “Beware of Jet Blast and Rotors.”  Ack!

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I’m late with this one because it’s been a crazy week, but here’s my entry for Architecture:

This is the view from inside the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History (whatever it’s called; the one with the dinosaurs) - in the hallway where the bathrooms are, laying on a bench, looking up at the ceiling.

The architecture in there was so cool that I had to get into a weird position and take a picture. (Should’ve seen the looks I was getting as I was laying down on the bench and snapping pics at the ceiling.) It reminded me of an indoor city, or a subway with a glass ceiling. Very cool and memorable; especially for a simple “breezeway” type of space where there were just bathrooms!

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This is my youngest, Alex, fishing this past summer. He was just-turned-two at the time and wanted SO badly to actually be fishing and pulling in the spot with us. Someone let Brendon’s rod get too close to his stroller and before we knew it, he’d picked it up and was “casting” with it, over and over again. He didn’t know to press the button while “casting”, but he did know to reel it in afterwards.

Yes, we did take the salt water rig and multiple hooks off of it - more for the safety of everyone else around him. You see, they were securely attached at the top of the rod way out of his reach, but after a while he tired of whacking the rod on the railing and started whacking anyone who got close enough. Those nasty squid-covered, bloodworm-covered razor-sharp hooks just wouldn’t do when you’re giving passers-by unexpected piercings.

I live very close to both the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, so when I think of salty, I think of the ocean! And fishing and crabbing, baby!
And now, thanks to Alex, I think of a cute little boy wanting SO much to be fishing in the wonderful salt air as well.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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