Seeing Pensacola

During our stay at Fort Pickens, we drove over to Pensacola several times to see the city.

Our favorite place was the Naval Aviation Air Museum.  I'm not a airplane nut, but I love history and there is plenty of it here! It took us two visits to see everything.

The museum is located at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.  Jim showed his driver's license and we were off to see it.

Inside there was a docent who greeted us saying there would be a tour beginning in about 10 minutes.  Oh, I forgot to mention admission here and all of the tours are free.

Our docent was a retired naval pilot who had served in Viet Nam.  We spent the next two hours going to different planes hearing the history of how the plane was found, how it was used, and how it related to air history.  It was absolutely fascinating!

One little tidbit about the airplane below.  The star on the American planes had a red circle in the middle up to World War II.

During the attack at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. soldiers had been firing at Japanese Zeroes all day and had been continuously told to prepare for another attack or invasion by the Japanese.That night a group of U.S. aircraft flew over trying to land at the base.The soldiers only saw the red circle in the night and fired on the planes shooting many of them down.  The insignia was immediately changed.

This was President George H.W. Bush's trainer plane in World War II, the number 41 was added to signify his presidency.

The Blue Angels are stationed here and practice at the airfield.  Four of the blue jets are suspended from this glass ceiling.  It is a magnificent sight.

There is another hangar with more aircraft, one being this helicopter that was flown while President Richard Nixon was in office.

There was another tour we went on that takes you to the landing strip outside with more planes and helicopters, many waiting for refurbishment.

The Naval Air Museum is a must see in our opinion if you are ever in this area.  The tours are well done and it is so interesting to hear about how these planes are found and their history.

We also went to Fort Barrancas which is just down the street from the Naval Air Museum.  This was another old fort very similar to Fort Pickens and directly across from it.

This was a drawbridge over a moat leading into the fort.

Here's a cannon guarding the waters on Pensacola Bay.

There was a tunnel that went completely around the fort on the outside.

While in Pensacola, we also went to the Pensacola Lighthouse which is across the street from the Naval Air Museum.

All around Pensacola are these pelicans with different scenes and logos painted on them. They are really cute.

We climbed the 177 steps up to the top of the lighthouse.  The stairway is steep and winding.  If you are going up you must stop and yield to those coming down.  We had to do that a couple of times as we climbed up.

The view from the top was nice and the docent at the top had lots of interesting information.

We also had some more nice days on the beach to enjoy reading.