Plans are great until they do not work. Today was one of those days. The troubles actually began the night before. Yesterday was laundry day. We had picked a hotel with laundry available. Except the dryer was very slow. The laundry was not complete until after 1 am, and it was not folded and put away yet.
The morning brought new challenges. Marlene was not feeling well. How do you see a doctor when you are 700 miles from home? It takes some time. We finally got to contact our doctor. Everything turned out ok. After that we got the laundry done. We finished all of that just before noon. So our planned two tours were reduced to one tour. The selected tour was the Gulf Quest National Maritime Museum.
The museum is shaped like a ship.
Inside the museum there are numerous interactive displays, movies, artifacts and lots of training and history of shipping and the ocean. While the displays cover general information, there is coverage of the importance of shipping and the ocean to Mobile and the Gulf Coast.
The largest and most expensive interactive display is the $500,000 helm simulator. It is quite the video game. The screens are immersive enough that even without force feedback, you feel the room moving.
Another interactive display was the storm center. It included a table for participants, and screens around the room. The table top is a display that teaches about hurricanes by having the participants direct the study of a hurricane.
We spent the afternoon learning about the gulf, shipping, fishing, the oil industry, and the people from the area. This is a fun museum. We decided to head to our second tour of the day to take pictures of the site. On the way we got to travel through a tunnel we learned about at the museum.
On the other side of the tunnel we saw our second destination of the day. The USS Alabama, a battleship. It was too late for the tour, but the ship is quite a site just from the outside.
With both sites visited, we traveled across Mobile bay to our next hotel.
Even when plans do not work out, you can still have a great day.