Since we're at the beach, today became a day for exploring the sea. This morning, we headed up to Wilmington to see the U.S.S. North Carolina, a battleship from WWII. It's a self-led tour, where you get to visit a vast majority of the ship's inner workings. We saw the engine room, crew's quarters, turrets, command center, and lots more. The kitchen was huge, with bread mixers and kitchen aids large enough to feed a navy. We were facinated by the analog computers in the plotting room, containing rows upon rows of transistors for navigational computing. And in the storage room, they had a old box from Garlock Packing, the company my grandfather worked for near Buffalo, NY. It was nice to see a piece of history that served in every major battle in the Pacific.

We then headed down to Calabash for dinner at Captain John's, one of a row of seafood restaurants. Calabash is the local shrimp capital, so most of us ordered either fried or saute'ed shrimp. It was large portions of medium-sized shrimp, and it tasted wonderful. We especially liked the hushpuppies appetizer.

As a final homage to the sea, we took in a movie with Dad, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, his second time, our first. Not knowing exactly what to expect, except high-seas action, it was a surprisingly good movie. It has all the plot twists of a thriller with the historical feel of a documentary. We felt like we were on the H.M.S. Surprise right along with the crew, experiencing the battles, dead time, graphic surgery, sea sickness, everything. The friendship of the capitan and the doctor was well-explored, and it was fun to see a naturalist experiencing the Galapogos Islands for the first time. We highly recommend seeing this movie.