Fredericksburg is home to a world class museum- The National Museum of the Pacific War. Why is it located in Fredericksburg? Because Admiral Chester Nimitz was raised in
Fredericksburg. Like many museums, this one is huge and can be overwhelming. It was divided into small rooms and each room had a theme, whether it was a person, a battle or something else of significance that happened before or during WWII. We skipped some rooms completely and others we investigated thoroughly. I spent some time in the Midway room-having seen the movie about it a million times, it was interesting to see more details regarding how it all happened and why it went down the way it did. At that time, the Americans knew an attack was planned on something the Japanese code referred to as “AF”, but they were in disagreement over what the target “AF” actually was. The American code breakers had broken some of the Japanese code, but not all of it, so key information was missing. Someone came up with a simple ruse. The personnel at Midway were instructed to radio to the mainland that they were running low on water. Soon thereafter, a Japanese message was intercepted that stated that “AF was low on water”, and the target was confirmed. Quite clever! 
Many of the rooms had backlit tables that showed movement of troops and ships, complete with a narration that explained when and how a particular battle took place. It did a great job of giving us an overall sense of what happened, and what significance a particular battle had. This room was the Iwo Jima Room. Some of the rooms were about the people- sometime soldiers, but also the general population, and the effect the war was having on everyone. There was one room that talked about rationing. My mom was a young teen during that time and I remember her telling us about the rationing, and collecting metal to donate to the cause. She and the other kids in the neighborhood used to go around with a wagon, collecting whatever they could for the war effort.
Another room was dedicated to the Sullivan family from Iowa. There were 5 Sullivan “boys” in the navy. Although there were technically rules against family members serving on the same ship, one of the brothers asked for, and was granted, permission for all of them to serve on the USS Juneau. In November of 1942, the USS Juneau was sunk during the battle of Guadalcanal. There were only 10 survivors, and none of them were named Sullivan. Security was such the navy didn’t want it to get out that the Juneau was lost, so the family was not notified right away and in fact, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan heard rumors from neighbors that her boys had been lost, and wrote to 
A separate building houses a small museum dedicated to Admiral Chester Nimitz and his life, and down the street there is an indoor/outdoor arena called the Pacific Combat Zone that contains realistic, life-size models of battlefields, PT boats and an aircraft hanger on an aircraft carrier.
By now it was close enough to Christmas that the downtown
lights were all ablaze and the annual “Christmas Journey” was supposed to take place while we were in town. The Journey is a drive through “show” of the story of Christmas, portrayed by live actors. Unfortunately it rained the last night, which was when we had planned on going, so the show was canceled. When we got to San Angelo, we found out they have a “drive thru” holiday show as well, but it isn’t comprised of live people. Its an enormous light display. Even though it rained while we were there, we did manage do do the drive-thru. They had everything from the “12 days of Christmas” scenes to an animated Snowman machine.
the snowman machine
There is a small historic downtown shopping area, and some pretty good hiking in the San Angelo area. We did an 8 mile hike in San Angelo State Park and Paul used his Iphone to geocache for the first time. We found 2 caches
