Wilmington, North Carolina
The North Carolina coast is a deviation from any route through the state. It doesn’t matter where along the coast your destination might be, its going to take some weaving to get there. We were heading into North Caroling from the southern coast and while Wilmington still took some weaving to get to, it was more-or-less “along the route”. We have stated in Wilmington before and while it is a nice little town with shopping, restaurants, beaches and opportunities to get out on the water we didn’t really have the time to fit any of that in this time. So, the stop was purely for the Battleship which we remembered being a highlight from before.
The newly designed parking lot made it so that we had a spot for our giant RV and so it was easy to park, walk inside and get tickets. We thought it would be busy since it was a Sunday at the end of May, but it wasn’t. It was hot though. We filled one water bottle for the three of us which wasn’t really enough. The self-guided tour had plenty of info and arrows to follow; the boys had fun climbing inside the turret and using the hand cranks to spin the guns around. We tried to count coins in the wishing well, imagine what it was like to sleep in the hanging cots and pick through buggy bread out at sea. We decided we were thankful that we never had to see the kind of action that the boys of Battleship North Carolina saw during WWII – which, compared to others didn’t seem all that intense.
Sweating and shielding our eyes from the sun, we climbed back up onto the top deck and decided that we had better get on the road again. So, we skipped the climb up to the top of the boat, waved hello to the gigantic alligator in the swamp (a real one!) and exited through the gift shop. Being one of the best preserved Battleships we’ve visited, we would definitely visit again and make sure we go all the way to the top!
Tips:
- Bring water – it’s hot down below and up on top!
- If you have time, walk along the Boardwalks to explore the wetlands.
- Parts of the ship are accessible. Others are not. The deep down areas are quite tight – either don’t think about it or just skip those areas!
punkTREKS 