Fleet Week 2012: Parade of Ships

Mikro and I watched the parade of military ships into New York Harbor for Fleet Week. (Sadly, we got there too late to see the Op Sail tall ships come in, though we did see a couple later, up near the Intrepid.) In addition to US Navy and Coast Guard vessels, there were military ships from Canada, Japan, Finland and Australia taking part. There were also helicopter and jet flybys, including the Navy's Blue Angels. Here are some of the ridiculous number of photos I took:

Watching Enterprise Fly

Mikro and I had the once in a lifetime opportunity of seeing the Space Shuttle Enterprise fly up and down the Hudson River atop a 747 transport aircraft, on its way to become the newest exhibit at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. We took an early train, hoping to see it on our way down the Hudson Line into the city. Kev updated us with timing information, and it became apparent that we would be too early to see it if we continued our ride. So we hopped off at Yonkers, hoping to catch it and still make an early enough train to get to Mikro's science class... Standing around on the windy platform, we met a former NASA rocket scientist, who was also trying to catch the flyover, and watched together. Just a minute or so before our last possible train pulled in, we were amazed to see the shuttle pass by, incredibly close to our side of the river. I snapped a few quick photos and we hustled onto the train. We rushed to the door windows on the river side, and got to watch as she made her return pass downriver as well.





Moments later, Kev was taking amazing shots from Battery Park as Enterprise circled the Statue of Liberty and flew over lower Manhattan.









What an amazing experience. I am so glad Mikro got to see this bit of history!

Intrepid Sea Air & Space Museum and Pier 84

On Thursday, Kevin had a meeting with one of the curators at the Intrepid about an upcoming exhibit on ejection seats, Kevin's weird area of expertise. After their talk, he's going to be lending them a couple of seats and some other stuff for the exhibit. Mikro and I tagged along, and got to enjoy the museum and the park at neighboring Pier 84. One of Mikro's favorite exhibits was the LEGO model of the Intrepid.







We explored the hanger deck first, and particularly the kid friendly zone, then moved on to Combat Information Center, and finally, the flight deck. My two aviation geeks were in heaven.












Then we spent a peaceful and relaxing evening watching the sun set from Pier 84 (although first, Mikro got himself thoroughly soaked and cooled off in the water park area.) It's been a long time since we just hung out like that. Usually we are rushing off on some amazing field trip, and often we have more than one thing to do in a day. We were thinking about heading to the Times Square Discovery Exposition Center to see the Pompeii exhibit, but my back was bad, and we decided to save it for another day, and just enjoy the afternoon. I'm glad we did!