Travel day to Fredericksburg Texas and a tour of the WWII Museum

We need to play a little catch up it seems. Thursday 5/1/14 was another travel day so after our morning routine and a last walk along the San Antonio River we lifted our jacks and headed out on an 80 mile drive from San Antonio to the Fredericksburg RV Park in,,,, well you guessed it,, Fredericksburg in the hill country of Texas.

Let me take a minute and mention for anyone that may want to stay at Travelers Work in San Antonio, be sure to use the directions THEY give you to get to and leave from there park. Chances are if you follow the directions of a GPS you will cross over a RR crossing that has a very steep and ugly approach and you will most likely drag one thing or another or worse.

Our drive was at a leisurely pace and we stopped at a Love’s truck stop a few miles before reaching Fredericksburg to fill up. We figure to have a longer than normal travel day when leaving and figured it would save a little time. Plus we needed to kill a little time so we didn’t arrive at the campground to much before their 12 o’clock check in time.

Once we arrived and got settled in Diane and I jumped in the Jeep and decided to drive around a little and do a walking tour through the downtown area.

When researching Fredericksburg like we do every town before we get there we saw that the population was just under 11,000 people so we were a little surprised by some of the large grocery stores and a good sized Wal-Mart in town.

Lasting Friendship

The downtown area is a shoppers and eaters delight. Filled with placed to wonder through. And wonder we did, up one side of the street and down the other popping in and out of shops as we went.

I found Rustlin Rob’s to be very interesting and spent a fair share of time sampling my way through the store. Here is a link to it. http://www.rustlinrob.com/

After getting a good lay of the land and a few hour walking tour through downtown we headed home and kicked back.

Fredericksburg is from a German decent. Instead of me giving the history we will share an interesting link. http://fbgtx.org/index.aspx?nid=191

Friday 5/2/14 we decided to visit the WWII Museum. We have visited many museums since hitting the road ranging from nothing more than a glorified shack to the over the top variety. And the WWII museum here in Fredericksburg falls into the over the top category for sure. In fact when you purchase your ticket you are told it is good for 2 days, there is a reason for that!

It seems every war of the Pacific is covered, many of which I never heard of. It is highly informative, up to date and has state of the art interactive displays.

This place paints a realistic view of war, and doesn’t try to sugar coat or water down the facts at all. There are many films playing throughout the museum that illustrates the specific tactical maneuvers on large multimedia tabletop displays throughout the exhibit. And these films are not played out by movie stars. Many of the films are of the battle fields and show some gruesome hard facts of the war.

There are numerous displays throughout the museum as well and many many many written out facts all over the walls. In fact so many that unless you wanted to literally spend DAYS tour the museum you just have to pass many of them up. It’s one of those museums that put me into information overload and my mind just couldn’t take any more in.

Admiral Nimitz

A Mark IX Depth charge

A 20′ long Mark XIV Torpedo

We will just share a few of the pictures we took, I hope you enjoy them and we hope you have a chance to visit the museum for yourself someday. It’s well worth the $14 each entry fee if you like history.

**** You may notice that the dates on some of the pictures are from Saturday 5/3. That is because we broke up our tour between the 2 days. There are 3 parts to the museum, the main building, the Admiral Nimitz building and the Pacific Combat Zone. Just too much to see I one day and be able to stay focused or us. But I want to keep the pictures together. Obviously we are a little behind on the blog LOL!!**

Here is a link to the museum in case you are interested. http://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/

 

After the museum we decided to have a late lunch/early dinner at the Friedhelm’s Bavarian Inn. We just HAD to at least have one German meal while here and it came highly recommended. We had our very first Schnitzels ever and enjoyed them very much. Diane had the Zwiebel and I had the Jager then we split and shared them.

After lunch we headed downtown to find a shop that Diane spied the other day with a bunch of sandals. But once again we headed home without buying anything LOL!!!

Once home we loaded Jack in the back of the Jeep and took off for a drive in the country. The roads were packed in town because of the Film Festival going on and a Motorcycle Rally being held in the next town over but out in the country side is was nice and mellow. It really feels like a town with a population of 40,000 than a town with a population of 11,000 LOL!!

We drove around until almost 8pm and then headed home.

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Saturday of course we finished the tour of the museum and we drove out to the Enchanted Rock and did some hiking but I will save that for a separate update. There are just too many pictures to try and make this update larger so come back soon!!