Today was spent at the USS Lexington Museum in Corpus Christie. We were there for about 5 1 /2 hours and could have spent longer but we closed the place at 5 p.m. If you ever go, go when they open at 9 a.m. and you’ll have plenty of time. I won’t bore you with all of the history, but the City of Corpus Christie had to compete with several other cities to be awarded the final disposition of the ship by the federal government. In the end it was their long term plan for self sustainment that won them the bid. The entire project remains funded entirely through donations, admission fees, and royalties from their gift shop. No federal, state or local monies are needed. They have turned this massive former aircraft carrier warship into a naval museum not only for its own history, but the history of all naval ships and naval enterprise in general dating back to ancient times. They included the planes that were used as well as helicopters. The tours of the ship are self guided and were geared toward specific areas of the ship from the hangar level to the living quarters, galley, dining, sleeping, to the bridge. The sailors could have anything they wanted to eat, and could put as much in their plate as they wanted. The only rule was that if it was on their plate they had to eat it. From what I saw of the menus, they ate very well, indeed. I thought that below decks was cramped and tight for space while Stacy thought it was larger and more open than she had imagined it would be. The ship had anywhere from 1,550 to 3,000 people on it depending on the conditions. You can imagine the logistics to manage that kind of habitation from food to water to sanitary needs. The ship purified 180,000 gallons of water EVERY day just to give an example. I hope that you enjoy the pics as much as we enjoyed our visit.
