The Blue Angels

We went over to Pensacola the other day to watch the Blue Angels practice. If you're ever in the area be sure to go see them, they practice on Tuesdays & Wednesdays. They practice right behind the Navel Air Museum on the base and they start at 8:30am, don't be late. If you go you have to enter the base from the WEST gate and plan on about a 30-40 minute delay getting in with all the traffic and the Vehicle Check point. Be sure to have your license, registration and insurance papers handy. It's really not bad, it's just that there are so many people going in at once. It might have been worst this time since it's Easter break.
They put on a 45 minute show with seven aircraft and they are right in your face, the runway is only about 50 yards away from the fence line. They do most of their stuff right in front of you or right over your head.
Be sure to take some type of EAR PROTECTION, especially for kids, we went to Walmarts and got the cheap orange foam ones for $1.49 and they worked great.
The top picture is right at the end of the show, sort of a final bow as they peal off to land. The picture at the bottom was taken from the Blue Angels web page, take a look at it they have some fantastic photos on it.
If you go on a Wednesday the pilots come to the Museum right after the practice to pose for pictures and sign autographs, but be prepared for a ton of people.
I you want to go see the Museum be sure to pick a day they DON'T practice. It opens at 9:00am and there might be about 20 people there with you, it's a great museum and plan on spending anywhere from 2-4 hours depending on your interest in this type of stuff. The Officers club is on the second floor and open to the public for lunch, good food and prices, (you have to see it even if you don;t eat there.
Well back to camp to sit out a few more rainy days.

The Blue Angels

We didn’t do a lot this week, discovered a few new restaurants, drove along the coast and visited a few more cemeteries.
We found a nice eating spot in the town of Baker, GATORS “Home of the BUBBA Burger” it’s kind of a 60’s diner with great food and a Blue Plate Special.
We took a drive down to the coast to do a little shopping at the Destin Outlet Mall, no good deals today, then down to Grayton Beach, Seaside, Seagrove and Watercolor. All beautiful sounding names but don’t bother going there. They have all turned in to rental towns, beautiful homes that you can rent for $1200 a week, you can’t see the water because of all the buildings and this being Easter break, traffic was moving about zero miles an hour. We spent an hour at Eden Garden’s State Park, nice but not great.
The highlight of the day was in Defuniak Springs, we met a local in an old cemetery and he told us about the Pub Burger at Ed’s. Of course we had to try it since it was dinnertime. This is another place that is right out of the 60’s and the Pub burger is about a half pound, but we managed to eat all of it. One of the better burgers we’ve found.
So much for the diets this month.


Eden Gardens

Hey Buddy, GOT A DIME

Well we must be feeling better, we're back out walking the cemeterys. We were in the north Pensacola area the other day and the hurricane damage is worst then it was in the Port Charlotte area. We're going to take a drive down by the coast next week and see how bad that still is, most of the coast roads are still buried under twenty plus feet of sand.

MOVED SOUTH

We managed to survive our week of cold weather in Michigan for a full 6 days before Jim got sick. We left there on Saturday to miss the 6 inch snow storm which was coming Sunday, so we did the drive back to Chattanooga in one day which gave Cathy a change to catch my cold. When we got back to the motorhome it was raining and cold so we ended up spending the next two weeks sitting around complaining and taking medicine. When we finally felt good enough to travel we loaded up and started driving south until we found the sun and some warm weather. This means that we are back in Florida, Holt which is near Pensacola, we'll be here for about a month.
We did stop for a day in Columbus Ga. and did a walking tour of the Historic District and the riverfront. We went through the home of Dr Pendleton, who was the inventer of French Wine Coca, which today we call Coca Cola. The guy ran into money problems and sold the whole thing to a guy for $1700.00. Bad deal.
Jim & Debbie , sorry that we raced by without saying hi but we would have ended up giving this crud to you. We'll try to get by later in the year.

Country's BBQ

This is the restaurant that we ate at in Columbus Ga. It's the old Trailways Bus Depot the they converted, the bus is actually part of the bldging and you can sit in it to eat your meal. Which we did and you can see what Cathy had in the picture below.

Cathy's Lunch

Cathy ordered the Lunch Special which turned out to be the Pig Tator. As you can see it is the biggest baked potato in the state stuffed with BBQ pork and sour cream. This is the actual size of it, of course she barly put a dent in it