Traveling with the Grobmyers Day 7 July 13, 2023

 The alarm went off early this morning, but it was worth it. We had an 8:00 early entry tour at the 9-11 Museum. We walked down and took PATH again. We’ve about got the hang of it. This morning we only had two stops to go and took us right to the World Trade Center complex. The new complex is very nice with lots of places to eat and shop. We walked out of the station to the 9-11 museum. Here are a few pictures from the area while we waited for 8:00.

The beauty of the early entry tour is you are there before the crowds arrive. It is very peaceful at that time of the morning.

We were called in and we went through security. We went through security in every building we entered while we were here.

We had a tour guide for the first part of the tour. She covered all the different structural things .

This piece of steel was the impact point of the north towers. It is where it took the direct hit from the plane.

This is the exact point from the 96 bombing that the truck with the explosives was parked.

This is a display of the missing flyers that people posted after the towers fell.

The outside stairs from one side of the north tower that many people escaped down. There was an awning that protected the people from debris.

The squares are the actual part of the original foundation structure of the north tower. They felt it was important to keep them in the museum.

Behind this special blue wall is an interesting thing. This is a morgue office. There are still unidentified remains of people from 9-11. As new developments in DNA they are continuing to be identified. Only people from the morgue offices or family members are allowed to go inside. The blue tiles represent the people lost on that day. And no two tiles are the same shade of blue to represent the individuality of each person.

This is a piece of the communication tower from the top of the building.

The other part of the museum you could not take pictures in. It was a very moving place. There were lots of video of actual news coverage of the day.I told Joe that I remembered that there was a Grissom grad Max but I couldn’t remember his last name. Walking through the gallery with pictures of all the victims I looked up and saw Max Hammond, the Grissom grad. You could look up the stories of people you might now of if you just want to know more about individuals.  

When we finished the museum we walked outside to the reflecting pools. There are two that are in the exact spots of the two towers.

This next picture is from inside the museum.it is the bottom of the reflecting pools. 

You probably have heard stories about the survivor tree. It is the only tree that wasn’t destroyed. I found the three and Joe and I both think it looks like some kind of Bradford pear tree. We can’t imagine a Bradford pear tree could survive anything.

The second reflecting pool.

We then walked over to One World Tower. We had tickets to the observatory. On our way we got our first Roll Tide of the trip from the security guard that pointed us in the right direction. He is a Steelers fan and really likes Minka. 

We got our second Roll Tide of the day a little later while waiting for the restaurant to open. The manager stopped and asked if we had been there before and then asked where we were from. When he heard Alabama we got a Roll Tide. Come to find out his daughter played on the 2012 national championship Alabama softball team. It truly is a small world. He said she got married last year and Murph and her teammates came up for the wedding.

After lunch we went down to the observatory. It was very hazy today. Don’t know if it is smoke, pollution or summer haze. 

This building has no windows in it and Joe said it was probably the Men in Black building.

It was worth getting up so early this morning. If you come to town you need to go see the 9-11 museum.