Naval Aviation Museum

Sunday, May 22 - Our campsite here at the Gulf State Park is really nice; it's right on Middle Lake, which has a canal leading out to the Gulf.  We've seen lots of seabirds, but no alligators.

On our way to Pensacola, we passed this guy who was really all set up for fishing.

We found our way to the Naval Air Museum, home of the Blue Angels.  The Blue Angels were doing an air show in Virginia this weekend, so we didn't see any of them, but they do hold practices on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which are open to the public.  Right inside the museum was a really nice statute representing the 5 wars we've been involved in:  WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, and Desert Storm.

We got on a trolley right away for a tour of the 150 planes outside, including some of the retired Blue Angels' jets.  This was No. 3, and the one they had to tow off the runway in Corpus last month was No. 3, so I asked if this was a recent addition, but the guide said it had been here since at least January, so it was not the same one.  The second one is Fat Albert, their support plane. 

This is the only way we could see them, and our tour guide as an ex-navy fighter pilot, and he had flown several different planes like these, even some of these exact planes.  I'll just post a few of the photos.

This next one was the precursor of today's AWAC plane, and he said that after they flew over an area they often had phone calls reporting that one of our planes had been captured by aliens from outer space.

This next plane was named for the pilot's girlfriend - I'm not sure what year - but there was also a Hurricane Brenda down here in 1955.

After we finished this tour, we went back inside and went on another guided tour.  Again, we had an ex-Navy fighter pilot for our guide.  He started this tour as if it was 1919, and he was Glenn Curtiss, the father of Naval aviation.  He provided a lot of history of early aviation and Curtiss's involvement with the Wright Brothers, who accused him of stealing their patent on controls (which he didn't).  The war dept. eventually gave them $2 million each and made them work together during the war.  Eventually, Curtiss got out of building airplanes (by then, he was a millionaire) and continued his development of real estate in Florida.  This tour lasted almost 2 hours, so that was a lot of standing and walking, but it was very informative.

This is a Blue Angels Atrium where they host a lot of events, including both naval and community.  While we were here, they held a Girl Scout "graduation" event.

Another interesting exhibit was this partial MIG.  Our guide said that in every war, the U.S. has managed to capture at least one of the enemy aircraft, and they would tear them down, then rebuild them and fly them, to learn what its capabilities and vulnerabilities were.

They also had several exhibits, including this one of bunk beds on the ship.  Joe said this is exactly what he slept in on the ship to Viet Nam, except there were a lot more of them, since they had to sleep 10,000 troops on that ship.  They slept head-to-toe so they were not breathing on each other (hope their feet didn't smell worse than their breath).

 We had lunch here, then took in a IMAX movie, which was "Born to be Wild," about orphaned elephants and orangutans.  We thought all the movies were the same, and that they would be about airplanes or the navy, so we were quite surprised.  But it was a nice rest and the photography was phenomenal.   We finally left the museum and headed back to camp, to rest for a little while.  Then we changed into our swimsuits and headed for the beach.  Joe got set up pretty comfortably, and he was good for a while.

But by now, it was after 6:00, and it was probably about 80.  We got in the water a couple of times, but I really needed some sunshine, especially after I got surprised by a wave.

This is a beautiful beach, and the sand is really fine, but we were getting shaded by the condos here, so we only stayed about an hour.   We went back out together and I got knocked down by a wave, so I was a little chilly.  We really wished we had our grandkids here with us, they would have loved this beach. 

From New Orleans to Alabama

Saturday, May 21 - We left the Big Easy about 9:00 this morning, heading East.  We found our freeway without incident, after a quick stop at the Winn Dixie and McDonalds (for Joe's soda), and came across the end of Lake Pontchartrain.   We had water on both sides of us.  I looked out my window and saw what I thought was our next bridge, and it looked pretty steep and high, but it turned out to be a roller coaster.  Whew!  That was a relief. 

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As we were driving along the highway, I was checking every creek, canal and river for alligators, and I did see one swimming along in a brackish pond.  We had our first bird hit the window this morning, so we added to the roadkill on the road.  We came past this nice little green area, I'm sure it was quite swampy, just as we crossed into Mississippi, so we said goodbye to Louisiana.  We had a good time there.

This is another state full of bridges, and these have really nice walking/running paths on them.  They seemed to get a lot of use.

 
We drove Highway 90 right along the coast -- a beautiful drive!  There was street parking right along the beach so we finally pulled over, and I finally got to get my feet in the Gulf!  We were in the Bay St. Louis/Pass Christian area here.  I dropped the camera in the sand here so I didn't get any pictures of us at the water's edge.  Fortunately, the camera seems ok, after Joe used the blow dryer and eyeglass cleaner on it. 









 We could imagine hurricanes blasting into this area, but there were sure some beautiful beachfront homes along this drive.

Some of this beach area was cordoned off and posted with a sign that the Least Terns were nesting.

 

Last year we drove past many snow fences in Canada and Montana.  This year, we are seeing sand fences.  We prefer the northern routes over the southern ones -- the humidity has caught up with us, and it is supposed to be 90 here tomorrow. 

Mississippi has a pretty nice piece of the Gulf Coast.  We saw gas prices in Mississippi of $3.42 today.  Unfortunately, we didn't need gas then, and now we are back to the $3.77 prices.  We are hoping Florida will be better.  The Biloxi beach was nice, as well, and there was a Hard Rock Cafe & Casino right along the coast, which I thought looked very interesting and worth a stop, but alas, we drove on past.


 

 We are always checking out the bridges, and in this area, we saw a railroad bridge that has a rotating section to allow boats to pass through.  We didn't know if this was an inactive railroad and this was a permanent position, or if it does still actually rotate.  Sure hope a train doesn't come along unexpectedly! It didn't move while we were passing.

The color of the soil always surprises me in this part of the country, although I know Georgia has really red clay.  This is a nice contrast to the white beach.  As Joe is driving along, gawking out one side, then the other, I'm thinking he's practicing his NASCAR driving again -- this time it's the blocking.  I'm sure the people behind us keep hoping we will turn off.  So far, no one has reported him for erratic driving -- at least that we know of -- but there would have been opportunities today.

As we came through Mobile, we spotted a Carnival cruise ship in port -- the Elation (which we have actually cruised on).  We would have liked to have just got right on it and went wherever it was going.  That's the first cruise ship we've seen, although I think we just missed the one in New Orleans.

Then we went through the Mobile tunnel, which actually goes UNDER the Gulf of Mexico.  That's amazing to me.

Just after we came out of the tunnel, we passed a Battleship Memorial Park, which looked interesting.  There  were several ships and planes on display, including a B-52, which Joe is always interested in examining. We didn't know anything about it, but maybe next time we come this way we can stop and tour it.

We got back off of I-10 and came the scenic route down Hwy 98, then 59 and 42 to Gulf State Park, near Orange Beach which John had recommended.  We passed through the very pretty town of Fairhope on this route, and it had lots of blooming flowers at every corner.  Looked like a very pleasant place to live.

We got to the state park just after 3:00 and lucked out with getting a spot.  There's a big music fest in town tonight, expecting a crowd of 35,000, just up the highway about a mile, and this campground was very nearly full.  This music fest is called "The Hangout" at Gulf Shores, and we could hear the music and applause from our camp site.  We rested for a while, then drove into the town of Orange Beach, but decided John had really meant this beach along here, which is a national seashore.  The beach is gorgous, with white, sugary sand, and the waves were rolling in with a pretty good surf.  There was even a wedding getting ready to start, right on the beach.  We saw the arch and chairs set up, and the bridal party as well, including the bride getting ready to walk across the beach.

We plan to take our lawn chairs and have some beach time tomorrow, after we drive over to Pensacola to the Naval Museum.  It's been many years since we spent any time on the gulf beaches (since my kids were young).  We enjoyed our drive today and are looking forward to getting into the water tomorrow.

On our own in the Big Easy

Friday, May 20 - On our first two tourist days, we used the shuttle and tour buses, but I knew we would not get out of this city without Joe needing to drive it himself, so that was the plan for today.  I got the laundry caught up this morning, then we headed into the art district, which is just west of the French Quarter, to the New Orleans GlassWorks & PrintMaking studio.  We plugged the address into Lucille and she got us next door (for some reason, the book listed 722, but the actual address was 727, but it was close enough).  This was a fantastic stop -- it wasn't a tour, we actually got to just sit and watch two artists making glass creations.  The two of them (husband and wife) were working on a mardi gras type cast-glass creation.  It was part of a much larger art piece, so when they finished that part and put it in the cooler, they took and break and she talked to us for a few minutes and explained that she rents time from this place that has two continuous-melt furnaces.  We walked through the showroom and they had some fantastic pieces there (no pictures allowed), then we went back to the workroom and watched  them work on some glass leaves.  It was very interesting, and amazing.

Cathy told us there was a Crystal Hamburger place on Bourbon Street (similar to White Castle hamburgers), so that was our next venture, and fortunately we even found a place to park on the street for this place.  We then drove on down through Bourbon Street and parked down by the marketplace we had walked through on Wednesday so I could pick up a few items I had spotted then.  The streets were full of pedestrians and street traffic through this area was heavy, but Joe managed not to hit any persons or mules.  (We did follow a mule and carriage for a little while.)

Next, we decided to see if we could drive by the Superdome, since we had seen it from a distance every time we had come into the city.  We followed signs and got near it, but could not get right beside it.  The basketball stadium is right next to it and I got a picture of it.

So Joe says, "I wonder where this road goes," and of course we took it.  Well it took us right across the Mississippi River!  So much for the Superdome - we never did get back to that!  We tried to get right back on the bridge to come back across, but that was a toll bridge and we didn't think we had enough change for that (it turned out it cost $1), so he didn't take that ramp.  So we're driving along, on Mardi Gras Boulevard, and I mentioned that Cathy said they had gone to someplace here where you could see some of the Mardi Gras floats.  Sure enough, right in front of us was the sign to Mardi Gras World.  We didn't intend to go to that, but we happened to be in that lane and were forced to turn, so off we went again.  We ended up right along the river bank, but we did see a few floats sitting outside.

Finally, he resorted to Lucille, so he clicked on the campground address to let her bring us home.  The next thing we knew, Lucille was saying "turn right onto ferry."  And sure enough, we ended up on the ferry across the Mississippi River -- that would be the "flooded, fast-moving Mississippi River."  So we were first in line, not at all sure what we were doing, or even if it was running, but cars slowly started building up behind us, and we could see some boat, possibly a ferry, moving out in the river.  It came and picked us up, and we drove right on just like we knew what we were doing.  And it cost $1.

We actually like ferry rides, but I didn't really want to be on this river on this trip.  But it was good.  The river was certainly flowing rapidly.  Joe said we were seeing the river walk from the river side, and I guess we were.

We watched a barge go past, and the steamship Natchez was also out here with us.

We finally got back to the the right side of the river, and headed to the campground.  We drove up and down Canal Street several times today, so Joe feels like he has mastered this city.  On our way home, we passed the area close to the Seventh Ward where artists had painted beautiful scenes on the support pilings under I-10.  We had seen this on the bus tour, don't know if they are only in one part of the city, or if this was a different group, but they were pretty awesome.  When I-10 was built, the beautiful
live oaks along Clairborne Avenue were torn down to make way for the interstate. This adversely affected property values in the neighborhood. Residents responded by painting images of these trees and other scenes on the cement pilings that replaced the trees. There are dozens of these paintings and they are very good.

As we got close to home, we tried to scope out our route for tomorrow as we head east.  There are lots of freeways, bridges, and one-way streets here so we tried to educate ourselves a little so we don't have to be too creative when we are in the RV towing the car.  We think we have a plan, so I'm sure Joe will leave with confidence!  Florida, here we come.