USMC Museum, Quantico Virginia.

While sitting down at happy hour chatting with a couple of buddies, the USMC museum came up in the conversation. One of the guys indicated that he had been to the museum once, but due to a family illness, he had to leave early. Another, mentioned that it was on his bucket list, but he never had gotten around to it himself. I myself have not been in quite a while and I remembered they were working on two new sections covering the modern period. As such, we agreed it would be a nice road trip and agreed on a trip!

The morning came and we all met at my house and we took the trip from there. We finally got to the museum and headed in. This is one of my favorite museums, as they balance the history, artifacts and narrative better than most museums I have been to in the US (the WWI museum in Kansas City is up there too). We started our tour and ended up being there until the doors closed!

Both my buddies were quite impressed and surprised the day went by so quickly and we were all entertained. The layout starts at the founding of the Marines and goes until the current day. Each conflict the Marines were involved in was covered (at lease I could not think of any that were missing). We broke for lunch at the Pub onsite (they are a cafeteria also). It was a little on the pricy side, but the food was excellent! Definitely worth it in my opinion.

We went through all the galleries. Unfortunately, the two new galleries are still not open to walk through. However, you can see them clearly from the balcony that runs along the length of them. They have set it up like being in a city in the Middle East and done a great job with emersion.

We ran out of time, so passed on the 30 minute movie (the fact that they charged for it did not help). Once we finished on the inside, we walked the memorial trail. This is a one mile double loop that contains many memorials to units of the US Marines.