Planes, Lighthouses, 197 Minute Clinic, More Birds

Fort Pickens Campground, Gulf Islands National Seashore - Site #E6

Another three days gone by ... sigh. It's been too cold to write and our TV antenna has tuned into PBS. Am I getting lazy? To catch up we visited the Navy, climbed Pensacola Light, waited a long time and wandered around the Fort Pickens area looking for birds.

Tuesday dawned cold and gray, so we decided to be tourists and visit the National Naval Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola. Speedy seems to be running well for now and not losing any fluids, so off we went to Pensacola, always keeping in mind Speedy's slogan "it's always something". On our way out of the park, we were reminded of home—they were plowing the road.

We weren't sure what to expect, but we had been told that the museum was worth a visit. We also wanted to visit Pensacola Light to get another lighthouse stamp for our friend, Kate, and also stop at Fort Barrancas, a part of the National Seashore located within the Naval base. We were pleasantly surprised by the museum. Having seen quite a few national park visitor centers and some small government museums at places like White Sands, we weren't expecting much, but this was huge, two large hanger-like buildings containing examples of virtually all of the aircraft ever used by the Navy, from wood and fabric biplanes from WWI, to the famous carrier planes of WWII, to the most current jets, even parts of the Navy's dirigibles from the 50s and a moon lander from the Apollo program.

Curse You Red Baron!

Pensacola Is The Home Of The Blue Angels

One of the most interesting old planes was the first aircraft to fly from the US to Europe, which was a Navy operation. Three planes left from the East Coast, only one made it. The Navy had a string of 53 "station ships" all the way across the Atlantic to light the way and for emergencies. One of the craft that didn't make it was rescued, another made an emergency landing on the water and motored the rest of the way facing backwards (they were floatplanes). The final one made it all the way to the Azores and then to Portugal.

The section on lighter-than-air craft had the gondola of one of the blimps based at South Weymouth. They looked pretty cushy inside compared to the cockpits of most of the planes. There was a wall-sized print of the interior of the Weymouth blimp hangar during an airshow in the late 1950s. I couldn't find Ellen or me, but we were probably in the crowd somewhere because we both remember going to air shows there.

We wandered through the buildings until lunch time, hoping to have lunch at the Cubi Bar Cafe within the museum. When we arrived there was already a 45-minute wait, so we went back to Speedy for sandwiches, returning to the museum in time for an IMAX showing of Rocky Mountain Express, a movie about the Canadian railroad route across the Rockies and a trip on a restored steam train. It seemed an unusual choice for an air museum, but non-flying films alternate with an IMAX Blue Angels film. Unfortunately, we arrived at the museum too late for the morning for "Breakfast and a Movie" which had the Everest film ... had we known.

After the film, we went to Pensacola Light, which is just across the road. At 191 feet, it is the tallest lighthouse in Florida and one of the tallest in the US. It has a range of 27 miles and still has its original first-order Fresnel lens. Having paid our $6 entrance fee and gotten the passport stamp, we obviously had to climb the lighthouse. It's a long, steep climb, but the view is pretty spectacular. At the top two volunteers provide information and man the defibrillator (literally).

View to Fort Pickens

Our last stop was at Fort Barrancas, one of the 19th century masonry forts built to defend Pensacola. It overlooks the entrance to the bay and was built to extend the original 18th century Spanish fort, known as the Water Battery. In addition to Fort Barrancas, Fort Pickens and Fort McRee were also built on the barrier islands at entrance, making the bay nearly impregnable. During the Civil War, the Union abandoned Barrancas and McRee, withdrawing to Fort Pickens which they held for the duration of the war. In 1861, the forces at Fort Pickens launched a massive bombardment of Barrancas and McRee in response to a Confederate raid on Santa Rosa Island, pretty much destroying Fort McRee and heavily damaging the Navy Yard in front of Fort Barrancas. The Confederates abandoned Pensacola and Fort Barrancas in 1862.

Wednesday was a pretty wasted day. It had cleared up but was windy and cold. Ellen had gotten an earache on Tuesday afternoon and it wasn't getting any better with the expired eardrops we had in our first aid kit. It was time for a little professional help. Being only an earache, we decided to try the Minute Clinic at the Gulf Breeze CVS and drove over after breakfast. When we got there, there were six people signed in ahead of her. The wait time was 197 minutes—the 197-Minute Clinic? This meant that she wouldn't be seen until around 3:45 PM. A woman waiting to be seen next, suggested that we come back at 2:30 when the nurse practitioner returned from lunch as people often don't come back after lunch ... sounded like she had experience.

We went off and had lunch at the Panera across the street, did some shopping at the Publix and returned some unused items I'd gotten at Advance Auto Parts when fixing the transmission sensor. We returned at about two. None of the four people signed in ahead of Ellen showed up and she was seen when the nurse returned. It was an inner ear infection and Ellen left with a handful of prescription drugs. We were back on the road to Fort Pickens by about 3:30 PM. Not much of the day left.

It was still quite chilly, but we broke out the grill and had local (to Hingham) grass-fed pasture-raised Weir River Farm Belted Galloway steak for dinner—a good old meat and potatoes dinner. We then retired to an interesting episode of Nature on owls. It made up for the wasted day.

Today began cold and windy again. It was 34° when we had coffee this morning. Ellen's ear is feeling a bit better so it became laundry day. Being lazy (or just cold), we drove Speedy the hundred yards to the laundry. This took up our morning. After lunch, we walked over to Fort Pickens. This was supposed to just be a walk, but we brought binoculars just in case. Of course, as these things tend to do, it turned into a bird walk. We visited the fort briefly, having had the full tour two years ago. As far as birds, we saw a better variety than we expected including a Sora and about a dozen nesting Great Blue Herons.

It is supposed to start warming up tomorrow. We'll keep our fingers crossed.