Tag Archives: US-98

2014/04/17 (R) The Blue Angels

No, we have not been visiting religious resale shops.  Today we drove US-98 west all the way to Pensacola, Florida to visit the Pensacola Naval Air Station (NAS).  Along the way we stopped at the Panera in Sandestin again.  The outlet mall shops were not open yet so there was very little traffic and not much of a crowd.  We took 20 minutes to enjoy some coffee and a bagel before continuing on to Pensacola.  The 100 mile trip was probably a little slower than taking I-10, but it was a leisurely, pleasant drive that allowed us to take in the coastal sights.  Photographs from today are in a separate gallery post.

As we got to the end of the bay bridge we did not see a sign for the Pensacola NAS so we picked our way through downtown and finally pulled into a Walmart parking lot where we put the address in our GPS.  As soon as we resumed driving we saw a sign for the NAS and Museum and the GPS wanted us to take a different route.  In this instance the signs won, although the GPS way would also have worked as the NAS has a front and rear entrance and our destination was closer to the rear entrance.

Four of the six U. S. Navy Blue Angels in diamond formation.

Four of the six U. S. Navy Blue Angels in diamond formation.

The Pensacola NAS is the U. S. Navy’s primary flight training facility and is home to the Naval Aviation Museum and The Blue Angels Navy Combat Fighter Flight Demonstration Squadron.  The Blue Angels’ practice sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday are normally open to the public.  They did not fly on Wednesday this week due to weather conditions so they flew today instead.  The session was open to the public and the public showed up in large numbers.  They started at 11:30 AM sharp (this is military stuff, after all) and flew for about one hour.  The practice session consisted of the same maneuvers, in the same order, that make up the “show” The Blue Angels do almost every weekend somewhere in the country from mid-March through early November.  They might repeat a maneuver or leave one out based on how the routine is going, how the equipment is performing, or the weather conditions.

The security personnel also acted as “play by play announcers,” letting the audience in their section of the grandstands know what maneuver was coming next.  While we were waiting for the practice session to start they also provided information about The Blue Angels, the NAS, and answered whatever questions people had.  The gentleman in our section had spent 30 years as a Naval aviator and was very knowledgeable.  He also had the right personality for working the crowd.

When the flight demonstration was over we toured the Naval Aviation Museum.  The museum is adjacent to the runways where the Blue Angels practice and is served by the same parking lot.  While not as extensive as the Smithsonian Air and Space Museums or the Air Force Museum, it is an excellent facility with a superb collection of aircraft and artifacts focused exclusively on Naval flight operations.  We took about three hours to wander through the exhibits, but you could easily spend two or three days here if you wanted to read every placard and study the displays more carefully.  Admission to The Blue Angels practice session and the Naval Aviation Museum are both free.  The museum has an IMAX theater, flight simulators, and other attractions that charge a fee.

We left the NAS around 3:30 PM via the rear gate and headed west towards Perdido Key.  Along the way we found the entrance to Big Lagoon SP and went in to check it out.  We had heard about BLSP from Jimmy and Sadie Clay, who spent March there as volunteer campground hosts.  (I did an article on their converted bus, the Iron Horse, which appeared as the cover/centerfold story in the April 2014 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine.)

From BLSP we continued west to Perdido Key.  Just past the entrance to Perdido Key SP was the Perdido Key Visitor and Community Center, which housed the Perdido Key Chamber of Commerce offices.  Four miles down the road was the Alabama State line.  Our reason for stopping here was that Jimmy and Sadie had mentioned that their daughter was the director of the Perdido Key Chamber of Commerce and we thought it would be fun to meet her.  She was there (Tina Morrison) and we introduced ourselves and chatted for a few minutes.  They pulled up the website for Bus Conversion Magazine on a computer and there was the Iron Horse on the cover!  We got a nice map of the greater Pensacola area to help guide us back to I-10 using parkways on the west side if town, thus avoiding downtown during the late afternoon.  The drive back on I-10 was through heavily wooded rolling terrain with light traffic.  I was still tired from my night of no sleep earlier in the week and nodded off while Linda drove.

After a simple dinner Linda read while I processed photos from yesterday and today.  I updated a plug-in on all four of the WordPress sites I run and got my personal blog post for yesterday uploaded, but not the photographs.  The rain started around 9 PM and quickly intensified.  It did not take long for the bedroom vent-fan leak to re-appear.  A powerful low pressure center south of Pensacola was pulling copious amounts of moisture north into Florida, Alabama, and Georgia.  This was forecast to be a long-duration rain event, but without severe storms.  River flood watches and warnings continued for the area along with urban flash flood warnings and high surf and rip current warnings for the coastal beaches.  We decided to put a pot on the end of the bed to catch the drips from the leak and slept on the couches.  I guess that’s a good reason to keep a sleeper sofa big enough for two when we redo the living room and dinette.

 

2014/04/16 (W) Emerald Coast Photos

Here are some photographers from our visit to Camp Helen SP and St. Andrews SP along Florida’s Emerald Coast.  Click thumbnails to view larger version of image in a separate tab.  Largest dimensions is typically 600 pixels.

2014/04/16 (W) The Emerald Coast

Powell Lake at Grayton Beach SP, FL.

Powell Lake at Grayton Beach SP, FL.

As forecast, it dropped into the upper 30’s overnight.  By the time we got up at 8 AM the temperature had rebounded a bit into the low-mid 40’s.  I switched on the coach chassis batteries to power up the Pressure Pro TPMS and checked the pressures in all of the tires.  They were all 1- 2 PSI lower than the cold pressure readings I took before we left Suncoast Designers in Hudson, even after having Tires Plus in Spring Hill add air to all of the tires.  But the temperature in Hudson was in the 60’s at the time, and in the eight mile drive to Spring Hill the pressures had risen 5 – 8 PSI.  How much air to add to each tire under those conditions was an educated guess at best and I had not guessed as well as I had hoped.

The DS steer tire, in particular, was reading 107 PSI this morning.  My target was 110 PSI.  The forecasted low for early Saturday morning is 53, and it will likely be closer to 60 degrees F by the time we pull out, so the cold tire pressures will be fine for the next leg of our journey.  The issue, and the problem I was trying to solve, was to make sure we had adequate cold pressures for the colder overnight lows we may (will?) encounter as we travel north without having the tires overinflated for where we are currently traveling.  The overnight lows for next week at our home are currently forecasted to be in the low-to-mid 40’s through mid-week then in the mid-to-upper 50’s.  I really need to rig up a way to travel with an air compressor that is adequate for adjusting the pressure in our bus tires.  We are still at the point where bus projects seem to get added to the list faster than they get checked off.

After breakfast Linda was reading, and I was reviewing, the blog posts I had put up last night for the 12th through the 15th.  Between us we found a dozen errors.  The Note app on my iPad2 has an annoying tendency to change words in an attempt to correct my mis-typing and less-than-perfect spelling.  I usually catch the change, but not always.  I also have a tendency to miss little words such as “we” or use “a” instead of “an” or “were” instead of “where” (or vice-a-versa).  I think most of these are typing errors; I actually know when to use which word.  (I even know the difference between “farther” and “further”, a distinction that seems to elude even professional journalists.)  I upload my drafts to my computer and finish them in MS Word where the spelling and grammar checkers find most of these kinds of things, but introduce their own unique set of rules about what words should be used.

I logged into our WordPress site and made the corrections.  I also rearranged the layout of some photos.  The posts looked fine on my computer but resulted in very narrow columns of text next to left- and right-justified photos, so I centered them without text wrapping.  I am still trying to figure out the optimum width for inline photos that can be left- or right-justified with text wrapped around them on an iPad.  I think it is around 400 pixels, but at that size details can be difficult to see.  If I center them without text wrapping, they can be up to 600 pixels wide with the theme I am using.  This is not an issue with gallery posts, if course, where the limitation on the size of photographs is the how large of a data file I want to upload and store.

We left the coach around 10:30 AM.  Photos from today’s outing are in a separate gallery post.  Our itinerary was to head towards Panama City via US-98/Co-30/Co-30A (the Emerald Coast Parkway) and then work our way back as close to the Gulf of Mexico as possible, stopping at several state parks along the way.  Before we got to Panama City we saw the sign for Camp Helen State Park and pulled in.  Formerly a private retreat, and then a private vacation resort for a company in Alabama, it became a Florida State Park in 1997.  Camp Helen was yet another example of the FSP system acquiring formerly private homesteads and roadside attractions and preserving them for the historical, educational, and recreational use of the public now and into the future.

Besides the buildings that survive from the resort days, the park property extends from the Gulf of Mexico through white sand dunes and scrub forest along the west edge of Phillips Inlet to the other side of US-98 were it runs along the southwest edge of Powell Lake.  Powell Lake is a costal dune lake, one of the largest in Florida.  Costal dune lakes are rare, found only along the northwest Gulf coast of Florida and in Australia, New Zealand, and Madagascar.  A large number of different bird species have been recorded here by members of the local Audubon Society and American Bald Eagles and Osprey are often seen.

We hiked the nature trail through part of the dunes and the scrub forest which had a different mix of plant life than we have seen anywhere else.  The forest included Sand Pines, whose range is limited to Florida.  Unlike many other pines, the pine cones of the Sand Pine do not require fire to open and release their seeds.  We did not encounter any other hikers on the trail and this was one of the nicest little hikes we have taken in a Florida State Park.  Camp Helen is a little gem of a park amidst the over development of Florida’s Emerald Coast.

We put the address for St. Andrews SP into the GPS and then continued on towards Panama City Beach.  East of Powell Lake US-98 gets renamed the Panama City Beach Parkway.  We followed the signs to the park which took us past the Naval Support Activity facility and the Navy Diving and Salvage Training Center.  St. Andrew SP is at the tip of a peninsula that forms the south side of the Grand Lagoon.  Just past the tip is the entrance to St. Andrew Bay, which opens into East and West Bays, and forms the southwest edge of Panama City.

There was a costal defense battery installed at the tip during WW II to protect the bays from German submarines and one of the two gun platforms is preserved under an open-sided pavilion.  We hiked along the southwest edge of St. Andrews SP Pond, a short but excellent trail.  The pond, and the island in the middle of it, are home to many different birds as well as alligators, and is an egret rookery.  We did not see any alligators on our hike, but we saw and heard lots of birds.

We left St. Andrews SP and followed Thomas Drive to Front Beach Road (Co-30) and followed this along the Gulf until we were forced back onto US-98 just before Western Lake and Grayton Beach SP.  It was after 4 PM and we were getting a little tired but we pulled in to Grayton Beach SP to check it out because Chris and Cherie of Technomadia had rated it one of their top 10 + places to camp.  The campground was fully booked, but we were able to drive through and agreed that it looked like a charming place to put down the leveling jacks (if only we had some and if only we could have gotten a reservation).  Continuing west on US-98 we spotted the entrance to Deer Lake SP and pulled in.  The entrance road was in bad shape, one of the few times we have encountered this at a Florida State Park.  It led to a small parking lot that was right up against some large fancy housing on the east property boundary.  All of the park lay to the west and was only accessible by hiking.  It was probably lovely, but we were hiked out for the day.  We switched drivers and headed back to our RV park.

We got back to the coach around 5 PM.  I dumped the waste tanks and filled the fresh water tank while Linda got dinner ready.  We had skipped lunch today, so we were hungry.  She made a simple green salad with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing and seasoned couscous to go with the left over Tofurkey roast and steamed green beans.  A glass of moscato and some fresh pineapple chunks for dessert completed the meal.