The coordinates will get you to the parking area for the USS
Lexington. You then have to proceed up the walkway and into the
ship to find the webcam.
There is an admission fee to get on the ship. Admission prices
are $11.95 for adults, $9.95 for senior citizens (aged 60 and
above) and active or retired military personnel with ID. Children
aged 4-12 are $6.95, and children aged 3 and under are free.
The Museum is open seven days a week, except Christmas Day and
Thanksgiving Day. Regular operating hours are from 9:00 a.m. until
5:00 p.m. From Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, the
Museum is open until 6:00 p.m.
The USS Lexington, CV-16, is a vintage wartime aircraft carrier.
Commissioned in 1943, she served the United States longer and set
more records than any other carrier in the history of naval
aviation.
The Japanese reported the Lexington sunk no less than four
times! Yet, each time she returned to fight again, leading the
propagandist Tokyo Rose to nickname her "The Blue Ghost." The name
is a tribute to the ship and the crew and air groups that served
aboard her.
The USS Lexington was decommissioned on November 26, 1991.
Corpus Christi is privileged to be selected as the permanent home
to this national treasure.
There is said to be the ghost of a sailor roaming the decks.
Here is a story from an eye-witness about the ghost:
10/31/1994 By Diane Richbourg Caller-Times
He's polite, knowledgeable and kind. Smartly dressed in a
summer white Navy uniform, he's good looking, too, with light hair,
a clear complexion and piercing blue eyes that haunt like a good
ghost story.
An apparition to write home about.
Those who have seen him say he might be found in the engine
room of the Lexington Museum, although none of the museum staff has
seen those blue eyes for themselves. He wears no nametag, but is
known solely by description.
His character so impressed a couple from Peoria, Ill., that
they told tour guide David Deal about it.
"The woman says, 'You know, I really did appreciate that
knowledgeable young sailor down there in the engine room who gave
us all that information on how the engines work,'" Deal
said.
Deal, who had gone up to the hangar deck to get coffee on a
quiet Friday, had been in the engine room and knew no one else was
there. So he probed for more details.
The couple said the seaman was 19 years old, maybe 20, and
wore a white uniform. He had a slight limp to his left leg. He had
memorable blue eyes. And he knew all about the engines, their
horsepower and the use of steam.
Deal, who had first shipped on the USS Lexington in 1959-60,
checked out what the couple had learned. "This apparition told
things about the engine that I don't even know," said Deal, who
made the rank of airman on the Lexington and retired in 1976 as a
catapult chief.
"It's fascinating because I'm one of these hard nuts to crack
on something like this," said Deal, who judged the couple to be
adamant about what they said and without reason to fabricate the
story.
So he ran to the engine room, calling "Anybody home?" and
searched for a hidden uniform. He found nothing.
To get credit for the cache you must find the webcam and have a
friend save your picture. You must be holding a sign, like the
example given, stating that you are not a ghost. Since you will be
inside the ship, no cell phone will likely work. It's up to you to
figure out how to coordinate with your friend. Post your picture
with your log or else!
(I don't know who those people are by the way!)
The camera gets a new image every minute and a half. It also
saves the last ten images so that should help.
The camera is at:
http://www.caller2.com/multimedia/cams/ghostcam/main.html#
Or you can just use the image at the top of this page. If you
refresh the cache page the image will update with the most current
web cam picture.
UPDATE 12/02/04: It seems the image on the camera page has
been changed and won't allow you to save the picture easily
anymore. I would suggest using the picture up above, at the top of
the cache page. It should update with the current picture if you
refresh.
Be sure to check out the other caches in the haunted
series: