Long weekend adventure: Sandy Hook, New Jersey camping!
Setting up camp
Always secure your food
Beware of poison ivy
Exploration by bicycle. On the way to the beach, we found this!
Battery Potter, built around 1890 to help defend New York Harbor.
Checking out the shells
For turning the carts carrying the shells
There was an axle and cart wheels at the end of this tunnel
Learning from the tour guide
The battery used steam powered elevators to move guns up to fire and down to reload. This is where one of the elevator shafts was located.
The battery was obsolete after 1 year. Apparently the technology wasn't as efficient as hoped. But, it's now a nice stop on the way to the beach. The interior was very cool on a hot day, there were stalagmites growing from the ceilings, and lots of old, rusty metal.
The gunpowder storage room was lit by a light shining through a lens in a mirror box in the next room.
We made it! The (very wide) beach.
Smoggy view of New York City. There is a fence in the midground of the photo. The fences on the beach were blocking out protecting areas for endangered bird habitat, for the piping plover and others.
Ocean! Very steep beach.
Sunset walk along the bay
So many hermit crabs
And interesting creature parts. Next, was a night bike ride. We saw bats!
The next day, the next bike ride to the beach. Swimming, ice cream, prickly pear cactus
Another abandoned battery
It was hot. We rested with a board game and a swim in the bay, and then biked to the Nike missile radar station tour.
Model of former Nike-Ajax missile launch site
Learning from the tour guide. Nike-Ajax, Nike-Hercules, maps of defense systems, the Cold War, Soviet Bear bombers.
This guy, telling us about that time in 1970 during his shift, that they armed a nuclear warhead and were five minutes out from firing on a Russian bomber.
How does a radar work? It's all about the magnetron, which produces the radar beam, that bounces off enemy aircraft and is picked back up by the receiver.
Radar van - giant analog computer, 1950s style
Tracking the bomber and missile trajectories, on a super cool plotter
Jane just armed, fired, and detonated a nuclear missile! Luckily, the computer was no longer hooked up.
The next day. Yay, for the postponement of nuclear armageddon!
We found a more gradual beach towards the southern end of the peninsula, perfect for mastering boogie boarding
And, of course, more sand castle art.
And, of course, lots of this happened. See week 2 book list. And ukulele around the campfire.
I'm way glad the nuclear armageddon has been postponed! Way too much fun to be had in the future :)
ReplyDelete