Last winter, when I realized that HMGS Cold Wars was going to be held in Valley Forge Pennsylvania. I was unable to get a room at the convention site, so I was re-considering attending. While at the pub with TJ, we started talking about the event and came up with the idea to tie it into a full historical road-trip. Valley Forge is just outside of Philadelphia, so there are plenty of things to see. So, we decided that would be the plan. Some time went by and we both put together our lists of sites to see and narrowed down the list. TJ found a couple of nice hotels and we had a plan. The day arrived and we started our trip!
The first stop on our trip was to visit the Battleship New Jersey. I had recently gone to visit the Battleship Wisconsin, which is the same class, so it would be an interesting comparison. We arrived around lunch time and started the tour. The museum and the ship are one and the same, so you start your adventure onboard. The tour started on the main deck. The tours are all self directed, you just follow the arrows. There is a red, blue, green and yellow tour that take you to different parts of the ship. A couple of sections have guides waiting will take you into two sections that require an escort (lower main turret and engine room).
We started with the blue tour that took us around the main deck (including B turret) exterior and interior, with a little diversion down one level. Here we got to see most of the main berthing areas for the officer and crew. There are also a couple of mini museums with artifacts talking about the conflicts of the ship and more general information about battleships.
We then took the blue tour and saw more berthing and the lower levels of B turret. There was a guide that took us into the turret and described the function and reason of all the areas and features. This included the amount bunker, hoists and ranging spaces.
On to the blue line, we saw the main engine room and some other common areas. The engine room guide was at lunch, so we did not get the separate tour in this area unfortunately. This also took us through the upper decks, including all the bridge and navigation areas.
We finished up with the yellow tour and went to see more of the common crew service areas and wrapped up the tour. We spent a little more time outside on the various decks and headed out.
It was a great trip and fine start to our road trip! Next we crossed the bridge to Philly and got our hotel rooms. As it was, the hotel is just across from the New Jersey, so we could see her clearly. I ironically, the is just across from the USS Olympia, so you defiantly can see the oldest class of armored ship against the last battleship made. Interesting perspective! Worth the trip.
- Manteuffel