On through Pensacola

Tuesday - I got behind on my blog, and now we are at John and Bridgette's and I've completely lost track of those last few days, but I'll try to catch up.  Tuesday morning we left the state park about 9:00 a.m. and headed toward Pensacola.  The first town we drove through was named "Watercolor," and it was a very pretty beachtown -- high rent district, I'm sure.  Most of the houses were different pastel shades, and all the grass along the highway and lawns was beautifully manicured.

Of course, peeking between every house were strips of beautiful beaches.  There was, however, lots of beach access all along here, and on into Pensacola.  We saw number 98 but don't know if that was the first access or not.  Here's no. 78.

We got into Pensacola and saw the Ripley's museum, and the building across the street which must be part of it -- it looks like it's crooked and upside down.

This looks like another fun beach town, with lots to do for kids -- water parks, miniature golf, bumper boats, lots of food places.  This would be another good place to vacation.  There's also a busy harbor here.

We got stuck there behind a train in town that wasn't going anywhere, so with Lucille's help, we maneuvered ourselves through neighborhoods and back to the highway without too much delay.  These detour decisions are never easy ones to make since we don't know where we are, and we are too long to make u-turns.

We got out of town and continued along the coast.  There are lots of Air Force bases in this area of Florida.  We got real excited when we saw a bear-crossing sign and Joe immediately went on the look-out for bears.

We saw several of these signs but no bears.  We crossed another long bridge (I can no longer keep my bridges, bays and rivers straight).  Again, we had lots of water on both sides.

There's lots of shore birds along all these bridges, and in several places they had roped-off areas for the nesting birds, so I guess it's the season.  It's also the season for hatching turtles.  We haven't seen any but the campgrounds include cautions about walking on the beach at night because of the turtles.  Crossing this bridge, we about got dive-bombed by a pelican -- Joe had to honk at it.

Next, we passed through the oyster area, along Apalachicola, where most of Florida's oysters are harvested.  Joe spotted some guys unloading them so he pulled over and we watched for a few minutes.  They were unloading bags and bags of oysters, and just a little further down that highway we passed piles of oyster shells (a little smelly in this area).

And we saw some of the boats they use for oyster harvesting (whatever that is called).

For most of the day, we drove right along the coast, but we finally headed inland and ended the day at a campground at Old Town, about 140 miles from Tampa.  This wasn't a great campground, but it served the purpose for the night.  Joe drove 257 miles today and he was more than ready to stop for the night.

Near Panama City

Monday, May 23 - We had kicked around the idea of going back down to the beach this morning and taking another dip, but Joe wanted to grease the RV, and we spent some time trying to figure out where we were going today.  No conclusions were reached, so finally, we just went.  We left about 10:00 but after about 10 miles we hit a traffic delay that took us 70 minutes to go three miles (road construction on the bridge).  Traffic was heavy leaving the music fest, but we just waited it out.  It's great not to have an agenda, especially since we didn't know where we were going anyhow.  A van in front of us, full of kids probably from the music fest, finally got impatient and decided to turn around.  He made a big U-turn and got off into the sand, and immediately sank both the front and back wheels.  Some of his passengers got out to try to push, and as we watched through the rear view mirror as we inched ahead, it looked like someone pulled over to try to pull him out.

I had lots of time to take pictures; we passed the turnoff to the seashore and found a neat pelican sign in front of a business.

Finally, just as the traffic started to break at the bridge, we came upon the sign about delays (we had wondered if maybe there was a wreck).  By now, it's 11:30 and Joe's thinking lunch, and we've only gone 14 miles.

Finally, we got to Pensacola and took the bridge over to the seashore and Pensacola Beach on Hwy. 399, which is a really neat-looking community. Even the sign makes you feel happy, and the water under the bridge was very pretty.

We saw work barges, boats and a parasail as we came over the bridge.  I still can't believe Marilyn went parasailing in Hawaii.  It looks fun but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try it.

When we got past the "town" stuff, the beaches, sand dunes and water were just too much to resist. 

We pulled off and played in the water for an hour.

A wave just about took me out, though.

We soaked up a little sun and buried our feet in this great sand.

After about an hour, we thought we probably needed to make a little time.  It was really cool to be able to just walk back up the beach to the RV, step into the shower to wash the sand off, and then fix lunch.  Life is good.

I was pretty sure the day wouldn't go by without Joe needing to park alongside the road, just to show that guy this morning how a pro would pull off (and not get hung up), so sure enough, he found us a spot here at this beach.  And like a pro, we pulled right out.

We drove on then, through Destin, which also looks like a really neat town -- lots of stuff for kids to do.  Our nephew is bringing his family here next week, so we looked it over pretty good.

Another nephew just left Panama City Beach on Saturday, so we'll check that out tomorrow.  The beaches in this area are wonderful, we are so lucky to be seeing all this.  We got a little sunburned today but not too bad.  Joe decided about 4:00, just as we were passing a state park, that he was tired, so we pulled into Grayton Beach State Park, about 30 miles from Panama City.  We got in 105 miles today, but it took about 6 hours.  We are only about 1/2 mile from the beach, but so far we haven't worked up the energy to either walk over to it, or unhook the car.  I'm thinking Joe's down for the night.

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.