Catching Up Pensacola

Ok…behind again, big surprise. March 1st we drove back into Pensacola to hit the Naval Museum for the second time, to take the tour and so we could get pictures. This Museum is so awesome, we went a total of three times and I still could have kept going back, it is SO jam-packed with cool stuff.

They pay such attention to detail in their exhibits that you actually feel like you are going back in time. I know this blog will be primarily pictures, but it’s just so hard to describe how cool this museum is…and it’s free!

I liked the Blue Angels exhibit, on the tour we learned that our tour guide had once asked one of the Blue Angel pilots if they really flew as close as the planes are hanging in the hall, he said “no, we’re closer”. When they are ready to start their air show tour, they are about 18” apart or closer. That is amazing! Bill and I watched the IMAX show ‘The Magic of Flight’ in this movie they talk a bit about the Blue Angels and what they have to go through to fly they way they do, they make it look so easy, but nothing could farther from easy than being a Blue Angel pilot. Incredible.

I have a bunch of other pics of the museum and I could go on and on about it, but mostly…you just have to see it all for yourself. Maybe I’ll post more pics about it later, but we’ll see. I really liked the Pensacola area and would love to go back someday.

On Friday the 3rd we drove into Mobile to try to tour around the Historic areas and stuff like that. Our experience of Mobile is that they haven’t gone to lengths to make it very user-friendly. We went to tour Fort Conde that sits in the middle of downtown Mobile, and there really isn’t a whole lot of information about it. There’s a gift shop where you can buy a bunch of crap and a visitors center that tells you all about the shopping and dining and misc crap in the area, but still isn’t very user-friendly. The exhibits they have in the Fort don’t really tell you what they are or any history about the place…maybe we just weren’t looking in the right place, I don’t know. We left the fort a bit disappointed, and went to the Bragg Mitchell Mansion. This was worth the $5 per person for the tour. It’s a beautiful house and the tour told us lots of cool stuff about the furnishings, but the best part was our tour guide. About two sentences into his spiel Bill had to interrupt him and ask if he was from Pennsylvania, you can tell by the way they talk, and low and behold…he was from Pittsburgh. That made the tour that much better. After the Mansion we went to the Mobile Botanical Gardens and apparently this is not the time of year to visit there…it was lame. And that about says it all about our trip to Mobile!

Tuesday the 7th we spent our last day in Pensacola, we went back to the Museum to watch the two Imax shows we wanted to see then went to Pensacola Beach. We had one more surf burger, and walked along the beach for a bit. Pensacola Beach is BEAUTIFUL!! White sand beaches that feel like walking through slightly gritty powder, turquoise blue water….can’t beat it, I love that area.

That’s about it for now. We left that area on Wednesday, drove 10+ hours to Charleston, didn’t like the place we were supposed to stay in Charleston so we only stayed the overnight then drove about 90min up to Myrtle Beach and that is where we are now. We are less than 100 yards from the Atlantic Ocean, and this is the first time in my life that I’ve laid eyes on the Atlantic. It has a completely different feel than the Pacific; it’s like a different world! I’m looking forward to our stay here, but I miss the Pensacola area and the park we stayed at in Milton, that place was awesome and the people were great.

One funny note about the place we were supposed to stay in Charleston. The morning after staying the night I went to take the trash out, the can was next to a cabin that was on the lake. It was really pretty, calm water, slightly chilly morning. I walked over to the dock to check out the dock and the little paddle boats and whatnot, was standing on the edge of the lake while I read a sign that said "No Swimming" and the sign below that which read "In Accordance with SC Law, it is unlawful to feed the Alligators" at which point I took two very quick steps back and decided it wasn't a bad thing that we were leaving. That and the warning sign on the office door to watch out for fire ants because of all the rain they had just recently had. Riiiight! Time to go!

More later
;-)K

USS Alabama

26 February 2006, Bill and I drove into Mobile, AL thinking we would spend the day in the historic sections of downtown. Silly us, we forgot about Mardi Gras, drove 90min into Mobile to sit in Mardi Gras traffic for 20min to make a U-turn and head back to the highway, on the way back out of town is the USS Alabama Battleship Park. We stopped and ended up spending several hours touring the USS Alabama and the Memorial Park.

According to their information at the park, the USS Alabama was commissioned on 16 August 1942, and is 680 feet in length, with a beam (width) of 108ft 2 inches. She is registered as 35,000 tons, but under battle conditions, she weighed in at well over 45,000 tons. Her assigned crew was 127 officers and 2205 enlisted, but she normally had a crew of 2500 men aboard. She earned 9 Battle Stars, and shot down 22 enemy airplanes during WWII.

The tour is a self-guided walking tour, you are given a guide and you follow the colored arrows and numbers around the ship and read about the different areas. Route A – Red Arrows – took you below decks, after part of the ship. Route B – Green Arrows – Below decks, forward part of the ship. Route C – Yellow Arrows – Upper decks up to level 0-8. It’s really a lot of fun to explore the ship; neither Bill nor I had been on a Battle Ship before, so it was nice to have it be new to both of us. I’m extremely glad they had the colored arrows and numbers all over the ship, everything looks the same and I think it would take a while to learn your way around and be confident about finding your way without the ‘breadcrumbs’.

They have the ship set up as a museum so some of the rooms have displays and stuff to read. Other parts of the ship were left, as they would have been, sort of a ‘living museum’ kind of feel. One of the more interesting points was the #2 Barbette. They have cut a special door in the outer section of the Barbette for civilians to be able to tour the inside of the Barbette; previously this was an area that only men aboard a battleship would have seen. The entire below decks portion of the tour smelled like diesel fuel and other things, like the smells had permeated the steel and just wouldn’t let go of the ship, each section had a slightly different smell.

The ship was also listing a bit and had hoses run all through to pump out water from Hurricane Katrina. The devastation you can still see in the area is terrifyingly amazing. At the Vietnam Memorial part of the park there used to be a Huey on a pedestal but only the pedestal and some torn wires still remain. The part of the park that used to be a picnic is just so much concrete and steel bits. There are tanks on display that were shoved off their concrete slabs and rammed into the dirt. The Aircraft Pavilion is closed to the public because the building sustained so much damage, so did the aircraft.

The Memorials themselves are awesome, they always are. The entire park is really worth a visit, even with the parts that are closed to the public. We spent several hours on the Alabama alone, we didn’t even get to tour the USS Drum Submarine because we ran out of time. It’s truly humbling to see these areas that are recovering. Only private monies and the costs of entrance fund this park, I was happy to pay the fee and know that it would help to keep it open, and help to rebuild.

I consider myself truly blessed to be able to experience the things that I have so far and look forward to experiencing more.

;-)K