Friday May 11, 2012 Bug Museum
Bremerton Bug Museum. Today the Explores club.... yes all 2 of us. Headed to the Bug Museum. I think it is designed mostly for kids... So of course Yoli and I had a GREAT time! We got to see some of the weirdest and coolest bugs. We explored bizarre bugs under the microscope, looked through glasses that let us see like a bug, and even watched busy ants in the giant 8 foot long Ant Farm! They have the weirdest and most interesting bugs on display.
We spent several hours exploring the bugs and having fun in the gift shop. I found some great gifts that I want to get for family and friends. They have really cool butterfly feeders and butterfly houses. The also have every kind of critter container you can imagine. Ant farms for the kids, kits to raise your OWN butterfly, frog houses and other very cool gifts and learning toys for the kids. We really had a fun time! After the bugs we headed to the Port of Bremerton and the Navy Yard to tour the Turner Joy.
This is the first war ship tour I have ever been on and it was very cool! The tour is un-guided so you get to climb all over the thing, you can walk through the
whole ship, go down in the crew quarters, the engine room, the boiler room, up
to the bridge, into the gun towers, etc. Amazing how they built those ships back
then (the USS Turner Joy is from 1957 and decommissioned in 1982), long before CAD systems and all the
tools we have today. USS TURNER JOY was the last ship in the FORREST SHERMAN - class of
destroyers and the first ship in the Navy to bear the name. Her keel was laid
down on September 30, 1957 in Seattle, Washington and she was launched on May 5, 1958.
Turner Joy's distinctive service included a double-duty role as flagship for
Destroyer Squadron 13 and Destroyer Division 131 with several tours in the
Pacific. She also stood air-sea rescue duty near the Marianas Islands for
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's visit to several Asian nations. In terms of
history, this vessel is most remembered for her participation in the Gulf of
Tonkin. It was incredible to walk through. To visit the buck where the crew slept.... (Man they musta been skinny, those bunks were stacked 3 high with about 2 ft clearance between the bunks. I, of course, had to climb into a bunk... RACK, excuse me... to see if a human could actually FIT... and I did, but just barley. LOL.) We toured the galley and imagined how it must have been when men lived and worked in these cramped spaces. It was so very interesting. I would love to go back!
We spent several hours exploring the bugs and having fun in the gift shop. I found some great gifts that I want to get for family and friends. They have really cool butterfly feeders and butterfly houses. The also have every kind of critter container you can imagine. Ant farms for the kids, kits to raise your OWN butterfly, frog houses and other very cool gifts and learning toys for the kids. We really had a fun time! After the bugs we headed to the Port of Bremerton and the Navy Yard to tour the Turner Joy. 
This is the first war ship tour I have ever been on and it was very cool! The tour is un-guided so you get to climb all over the thing, you can walk through the
whole ship, go down in the crew quarters, the engine room, the boiler room, up
to the bridge, into the gun towers, etc. Amazing how they built those ships back
then (the USS Turner Joy is from 1957 and decommissioned in 1982), long before CAD systems and all the
tools we have today. USS TURNER JOY was the last ship in the FORREST SHERMAN - class of
destroyers and the first ship in the Navy to bear the name. Her keel was laid
down on September 30, 1957 in Seattle, Washington and she was launched on May 5, 1958.
