Lish, a friend of mine here in San Diego, is stationed onboard the Bunker Hill, which is set to deploy on Monday for several months.

Here's Lish, encoffeed, before getting underway today.

Today they hosted civilian guests of the crew for a quick cruise out to sea and back which included various gun firing demonstrations, helicopter fly-bys, and a barbecue on the flight deck. Lish invited me along and I had a great time.

The Bunker Hill carries a whole lot of missiles.

The hawkish libertarian in me couldn't resist snapping this photo.

As we were returning to port, a submarine was heading out.