Pensacola

The plan now is to lay back a bit keep away from the big cities and just chill. Florida seems to be the place to do it. This state is enormous, as is the country as a matter of fact. I am going to drop of a few places from the itinerary (Detroit and Chicago) and spend the extra time in Florida. That will give me two weeks to get to Niagara Falls, Washington, Boston and the New England Region. The trip may be scaled back even further but we will see.

After the epic but emotionally draining time in Montgomery I pushed on to Pensacola, home to a famous stock car track or carts as I think they call them here. It is also home to the Blue Angels, the US Navy's acrobatic and precision flying squadron. I went to the base today to check out the Naval Aviaiton Museum, the place is massive. There is something surreal about driving onto a military base, having a uniformed guard check you credentials then being issued a pass to let you on to certain areas of the establishment. I tried how to find out about the size of the establishment and can't find it anywhere online. Normally Americans love to tell you the scale of things, like "....if you laid every ship in the navy end to end you could walk from here to Hawaii". Now I just made that up but you get what I mean. There is a photo I will post below that perfectly illustrates this. The caption reads "Four and Half Acres of Sovereign US territory, anywhere, anytime." Its referring to them sending an aircraft carrier of course.

This was an amazing set up. There were over 100 aircraft on display and simulators you could ride in and it was free, including the parking. There were lots of service personnel on hand along with retired navy pilots who explained everything. The old boy who showed us around was 85 years of age. He came across like an old duffer. He was far from that. When we got to a certain aircraft he started telling the story of how he got himself "rated" supersonic by taking one of these to 34,000 feet and putting it into a nose dive at full throttle. He was said it was a little boring and that there was basically nothing to it. 

This place had everything from the recovery equipment for the Apollo program, to Richard Nixon's Presidential helicopter, to the plane flown by George Bush Sr. when he was in the Navy, to the "Fat Boy" practice ordinance for the Nagasaki nuclear mission and just about everything in between. It was a seriously cool way to spend three hours. I could have spent a lot longer there but I am pushing down what is known as "the pan handle" of Florida, basically following the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico until I get to the Key West where I will come back up the Atlantic Coast. 

I arrived in a little town where I bedded down for the night called Apalachicola and had dinner The Up The Creek Raw Bar. It was excellent and the view was sensational.