After seeing the Air Force’s premier aviation museum, it
seemed only fitting to head to the National
Naval Aviation
Museum at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.
As we approached our destination with less than
4 miles to go, we hit stand-still traffic. We sat and sat. Then all of a sudden
we heard a loud Whoosh right above us
followed by other Whooshes. Bill
immediately identified the source: the Blue Angels. People in the cars in front
of us were getting out to watch the scheduled practice. That ended up being one
of our more interesting hour-long traffic jams.
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We saw 5 Blue Angels practicing.
(picture from the web)
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After the traffic jam/air show we parked our
trailer at the campsite and headed to the museum. It is much smaller than the
Air Force’s museum, but it gave us the chance to see some Navy planes not in
the Air Force museum. Bill was particularly interested in the World War II
planes.
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Goodyear FG-1D Corsair
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| Grumman F6F Hellcat |
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General Motors TBM Avenger
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| Bill observing a North American SNJ Texan |
There were many other interesting displays: planes from
other eras, space vehicles, blimp gondolas, a giant screen theater where
Barbara saw a National Parks movie, and interactive exhibits. Here are some
older Blue Angels displayed in the signature diamond formation, only 18” apart.
And here is one of the president’s helicopters known as
Marine 1.
On our way out we took a quick peek at the Pensacola Lighthouse.
