One of the recommended sites in Pensacola is the Naval Aviation Museum. This is one of the 3 best aviation museums in the U.S. The others are the Smithsonian (Washington DC) and the Air Force (Dayton Ohio). We took a tour at 9:30 with a former Navy pilot that was very interesting. He covered naval aviation history starting with the Wright Brothers through the gulf wars, showing examples of real planes of the periods and how they advanced technologically. It was interesting to see the changes in technology over the years but by the end of the tour we were weary hearing about the various (horrible) battles over this past century, so we decided to move on.
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| Graduation ceremony inside the museum |
Next we drove to the remnants of Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island (a barrier island off the coast of Pensacola). After the war of 1812, a series for forts was built to protect the major ports in the U.S. Fort Pickens was built by slaves to protect the Pensacola harbor in 1834.
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| Very strategic location for the fort at harbor entrance |
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| Interesting inverted arches to stabilize base on sandy soil |
The interesting thing about Fort Pickens is that even though it was in confederate territory, it was under Union control during the whole civil war despite many attacks, and was finally instrumental in convincing the confederate forces to withdraw from Pensacola. The fort was active until end end of WWII.
Heading back from the fort we stopped to walk along the beautiful white sand beaches of the island.
Back in the RV park our snow bird neighbors told us we had to visit Flora-Bama, the famous music lounge on the Florida-Alabama border. This locale was built in 1964 just after the first road was put in on the Florida side of the border. The county on the Alabama side was dry, so this became a very popular location and over time and had up to 20 bars and 4 simultaneous live music stages. It has survived hurricanes and adjacent high rise developments, keeping its original wooden shack/grunge look. Live music starts every day at 11:00 am on into the evening with bands rotating through every few hours. We watched a couple of bands on the main stage, in a crowd of mainly retired snow birds :) Of course there was a lot of cover band baby boomer music we could all relate to ;/
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| Lots of bras! |
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| View of the Flora-Bama from the beach |
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| Still the same between the high rises |
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