We got up early today to visit the National Naval Aviation Museum Pensacola, FL. MY first time ever in Florida. Huge museum, filled with airplanes from WWI to recent fighter jets.
They say they have over 150 restored aircraft and I’d believe them. But, first we’ve got to check out the two handsome hunks in front of the museum.
But, I’ve got even better pictures:
Yep, that’s the Navy boy in all his glory. You can see why I fell madly head over heels in love with him, right? Look at that smile.
But, back to the present. We decided to take the 1 1/2 hr guided tour along with 16 or so others but the guide was so boring that he had only Gary and me at the end. Actually he wasn't so boring as so full of himself. He kept grading us as a tour group based upon our questions and interest. He also graded himself on his ability to answer our questions. At the end of each section, he told us our grade and his. Strangely enough, his grade was always an A while ours varied between a C and a C-. His information was fine but his personality was, well, let me give him a D. Any guide who loses almost all his tour ...
There are exhibits on WWI, the Blue Angels who fly out of this air station, WWII aircraft, several flight simulators, an IMAX theater, lots of other exhibits and a cafe that was moved piece by piece from the same cafe in the Philippines. We especially liked the virtual carrier flight deck where you are in a theater and the scene before you is the flight deck of a carrier. Now, Gary actually has been on the flight deck so he knows the real thing but still liked it. On a flight deck, everyone is in a different colored shirt depending upon their job on the deck. Gary wore green which meant that he was an air wing maintenance person.
We ate lunch in the Cubi Cafe, amidst all the plaques for all the different groups who were there in the original Cubi.
After this we headed on over to the IMAX theater where we saw the DDay movie. Very interesting but it had lots of strange animation and both of us agreed that the WWII movie in the National WWII Museum in New Orleans was much, much better. That one is not to be missed.
We wanted to visit Hanger 1 which was under repair at the time but we will return to see this. Here is a model of the Saratoga, the carrier on which Gary was stationed, a Blue Angel 4D theater, an exhibit dedicated to Bob Hope and some other exhibits.
We then checked into getting to the Pensacola lighthouse which we could see - just over there. We checked our GPS and - only 1 block - we can walk this one. And, of course, we saw some Blue Angels practicing. (Gary always teases me about getting a butt shot of every animal we see. Guess what? I can get a butt shot of jets too - although blurry since he was going so fast. I asked him to slow down for the picture, but he listens to me as well as Big Gar.)
It is still a working lighthouse with a 1st order Fresnel lens.
A real puffer of a walk up the 177 steps to the top with the people going down having the right of way - and the handrail on the outside of the stairwell. That means that those ascending not only do not get the right of way but have no handrail going up. Whoo-eee. But the views are worth it.
Then a walk on the beach before heading home in the dark.
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