OMSI & the Sub!

Welcome to Portland!!!

 I just fell in love with the Columbia river!  It was so peaceful and calming, just watching it flow.

 Here is Jeff and in the background you can see the U-boat sub!

 Loved all the bridges too (as long as we weren't trying to cross them, then it became messy)

 I was trying to get a picture of the Submarine.

 more bridges and the Columbia

 Here Jeff and I met up with Jeff's cousin, Loren, to go take a tour through a submarine (something that made the two boys squeal with delight!) ;o)

 The Blueback (the sub we were on) is the third from the top.  The two biggest ones are the nuclear ones that are used today.

 This is the captain's quarters, he is the only person on board ever who gets his own room, and have a door.  Even if the Pres. of the United States were to be on board the captain does not share, the Pres. would have to hot-bunk with the boys. :o) By the way, that room isn't very big.

 This is called "red running" or "running red"?  Anyway, it is so light from their periscope doesn't give them away.  This is really what it looked like, and this picture below is how it looked when the camera's flash took the red away. When I saw the picture I took I was surprised to see how different things looked without the red light.

 The Torpedo room!

 Here is a better view of the Sub sitting in the water.  To let us in easier to tour it they had to cut a hole in the hull, so it is not submersible anymore, however in the movie "Hunt for Red October" this is the sub they used in the shot where a sub blows to the top of the water. Cool huh!

 This is it's propeller, I think it weighs something like 11 hundred tons?  Anyway a lot!

 This is us playing in the OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry)  I got to do the weather! The funny thing about the weather up there is that the day we flew in and the day we went to the OMSI were very sunny and nice and warm! Everyone we met was complaining about how hot it was and we were thinking, really, it still feels cooler up here than back home in Utah.  One lady at the Vietnamese place we ate at said "You (pointing her fingers at us), You brought the sun with you!" :o) we smiled and said sorry (she was very sweet and made such good food we went back the day before we headed home), that day was a record 102 for Portland. :o)  Looks like we brought the sun to Portland and the clouds back home to Utah!

 This is the infrared heat detecting thing :o) It was really cool, I should have gotten a pic when I was there with them.

 Here is what is inside the sub.