A Great Day At A Famous Los Angeles Attraction
Okay, this was really cool.
I was on the battleship USS Iowa in a conference room. In the same room where officers and admirals held high-level war strategy meetings in WWII, the Korean War and later a pre-Gulf War skirmish.
James Hill of MenWhoBlog.com, Greg Braugh of SuburbanMen.com and I were discussing website traffic, YouTube, social media and other topics important to our blogs in a men’s blogger conference set up by Men Who Blog (two other male bloggers scheduled to be there had to cancel at the last minute) on the Iowa, which is now a museum docked in San Pedro, CA.
We were eating pizza and drinking sodas when out of the blue, Greg leaned forward and said “we’re having a conference in a meeting room of a World War II battleship. This is really cool!”
He was right, of course. I mean here we were, less than 100 feet from where President Franklin D. Roosevelt sat and slept while on his way to a conference with Churchill and Stalin.
Earlier in the day, we were given a private tour of the impressive ship. The most impressive aspect of the Iowa are her signature feature, the giant 16-inch guns on here deck. They are so impressive those guns could hit downtown Los Angeles with a salvo and nearly reach Catalina Island 26 miles to the west.
In this part of the day, we were joined by Greg’s wife, social media influencer Where Gals Wander.
It was my third time aboard the Iowa – all within the past few months – and I’m still amazed by her. Then again, I’m a bit of a history buff and of course, being a guy I like big guns.
The big guns on the Iowa can fire a shell 16 inches in diameter for more than 20 miles. I don’t care how many times I hear that statistic, I’m still in awe of it. The ship has nine of these guns on three turrets, and the gun barrels – six of them sticking out on the front of the deck like sinister monsters – is an awesome site. Getting up close to them (and taking the obligatory social media selfies, of course) is alone worth going aboard the Iowa.
Another great selfie I experienced on this day was sitting in the captain’s chair overlooking those guns from the bridge.
The Iowa tour also included the meeting room, bedroom and the special tub installed for President Roosevelt when he used the Iowa to get to the famous conference of Allied leaders. It even has one of his wheelchairs.
Our special tour also took us into a restricted area that was once used to fire the missiles. Right now, it’s a bunch of empty computer screens but one cool element was a green radar screen scanning the horizon that looked like something from a war room in a movie. Instead of enemy warships, the only moving targets were cars gong along the Vincent Thomas Bridge.
It was great to be back on the Iowa and also to hang out with fellow bloggers. Later, we went to the San Pedro Fish Market Grill for a great and filling dinner.
What a day!
Leave a Reply