Sittin' on the dock....

When I was a kid, my dad often took us to the harbor at San Pedro to see what we could see. My dad loved to look at the ships and watch the bustling activity on wharfs. Often there were naval ships docked there that had free tours. When our boy was little and we came for visits, Grandpa often took him to the harbor to carry on the tradition.

Once upon a time a ferry operated from one of the piers in San Pedro. And then in 1963, a big bridge was built that made the ferry obsolete, and the building was converted into the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.



This time my sister’s husband offered to take us to San Pedro to the Maritime Museum, and so we piled into the car and off we went.

The museum maintains a tugboat, and the courtyard behind the museum, on the harbor side, has benches that look out over the channel, giving a wonderful view of the loading dock for the Evergreen container port for the container ships across the channel.



We spent some time sitting on the dock of the bay...

watching the mobile cranes stacking the containers on the deck of the ship, listening to the whoop whoop of the warning sirens on the small machines that were zipping around...

watching the seagulls...

watching large barges being shoved and pulled back and forth down the channel from a dredging operation.

I had some fun trying to get a decent picture of the huge starfish clinging to the dock, which was rocking gently all the time, without falling in.

A stone plinth in the courtyard sports a large cannon that was captured at Santiago de Cuba on July 17, 1989, during the Spanish-American War.

 I wonder what this weapon might have sounded like as it fired.

I also wonder how many more visits my dear old Dad will be able to make to this place that he loves so much.