2018 Blue Angels Practice

Tuesday we went back to the Naval Air Station to see the Blue Angels Practice. We had been told to bring our own chairs(bleachers very uncomfortable and crowded) and get there early. Once the parking lot is filled up the parking lot gates are closed and no one else can enter.

The show starts at 11:30, the gates to the field are opened at 10:30 and water and food are available by the volunteer organization. No bags or backpacks are allowed in, everything is inspected plus you need a picture ID. Once through security, you had a long walk over tarmac to the viewing location. Available are bleachers, rent chairs(not many), bring chairs or stand. You are in full sun the entire time. We roasted on the tarmac but it was worth it. This is probably the closest we will ever be to the Blue Angels since there  is a limited crowd.

Things we learned:

The Blue Angels use old planes that are no longer aircraft carrier worthy. Boeing refurbs them before being turned over to the Blue Angels. Boeing update/sdeletes software, refurb the planes to make the air worthy again. The normal program in the F16s  has all  sorts of safeties built in the need to be removed for the Blue Angels, the speaker wasn't too specific as to what is removed.

The people selected for the Blue Angels(there are 3 new ones each year) for a total of 6 are selected by the flyers themselves. Pilots who want to be Blue Angels are invited to tag along with them for a while so that the Blue Angel pilots can get to know them. The Captain is the only person selected by the upper echelons of the military.

Each pilot needs a minimum of 1250 hours of tactical flying, about 6-7 years worth of flying before applying to a postion with the Blue Angels.

The smoke that is used from the planes is mostly paraffin and supposedly safe.

There are 6 Blue Angels and they will fly with 4, 5 or 6. The only time they will not fly is if the Captain is ill. He calls all the formations and does all the coordination when they fly.

60 support staff go with them for each show and a show is performed 3 days in a row each week during the season.

The show performed depends on the cloud cover. 1500', 4000' and 10000'. We saw a mix today since the clouds dispersed  during the show.

Since we were at a practice session several formations were done twice as the Captain was not satisfied with the performance.

We had a low level flyover at 700mph(725mph breaks the sound barrier), very noisy. The speaker admited the plane could go up to 1450mph, we wonder how fast it could really go.

The entire performance is noisy. We were surprised kids weren't crying from the noise.

All in all we had a great, hot, very tiring day.

On Thursday we are leaving for Livingston, TX to get work done on our motor home and other odds and ends. We will be there for 1-2 weeks and then on to Oklahoma, New Mexico and Northern Arizona, unless there is snow.........

The Blog will start again once we start traveling.

2018 Naval Air Station, Pensacola

Sunday we drove over to Pensacola to the Navy Air Station Museum. We wanted to ge the lay of  the land for our trip Tuesday or Wednesday to see the Blue Angels. We are happy we did this for 2 reasons: first, the GPS didn't know how to find the Naval Air Station and second is we saw a great musuem.

Our adventure started when we put in the address to the GPS. No problems and off we went. Of course we also had a so-so paper map, no details. We arrived at a used car lot that had the correct address. We couldn't be too far off, we were on Blue Angel Parkway. Stopped at the next wide spot and plugged the address into Google Maps, we were 15 minutes away and had to turn around.

We finally arrived and what a great place. We took a very interesting guided tour of the restored planes outside and then wandered around inside. There was so much to see. After a while though it became a muddle of planes and decided we had had enough for the day. We also saw a great IMAX movie on air craft carrier operation. I highly recommend to anyone in the area to go visit this museum.

 

Since we weren't too sure where we were we set the GPS and allowed it to lead us home. Our plans were to stop for ice cream along the way but the GPS took us on a lot of interesting backroads where all we saw were gas stations every once in a while.

We are staying in Alabama and love the area, the shore has plenty of parking on the beach and views of the gulf. I was very surprised that the gulf doesn't have waves like the ocean.  The Naval Air Station is in Florida and there is a night and day difference. The shore in FL had wall to wall hotels and no views of the gulf. No access the the beaches etc. All very commercial. If you want a great place to go, with little traffic at this time of year, come to Alabama.


Monday we headed to Mobile to go to the Carnival Museum(Mardi Gras). This proved to be very difficult as I10 West was closed for 15 miles or so. We had no idea why but Goggle maps was black, not red but black. The sign said to follow the alternate route. We would have been happy to if we were told where the route was. We finally muddled our way to Mobile, the 40 minute drive took 1.5 hours.

We asked at the museum gift shop about I10. A timber truck had overturned and it would take most of the day to clean up. We found out on our drive home that a lumber truck and a timber truck had turned over. Looked like a major mess. There was actually a chipping machine(maybe more than 1) chipping the lumber that was on the highway. For the next 10 miles all we saw were 18 wheelers parked on the side of the road, no cars. We believe the police turned the cars around and sent them back a few exits to get them off the road but the trucks were too big to turn around and were stuck.

The Carnival Museum was very different. We learned about the history of the Mardi Gras in Mobile, longest running in the US, 350 years except for wars. Impressive. The Museum was primarily about the numerous organizations in Mobile that support the Mardi Gras and their participation. How the Kings and Queens(there are 2 sets) are selected and their role in the Mardi Gras. We also learned all the participation of the Kings and Queens and their Courts need to buy all their own gowns, the cost is into 6 figures. We also learned the items thrown to the crowds are paid for by the people on the floats. This is not a inexpensive endeavor to partiipate in the Mardi Gras.

Here are pictures of some of the Kings and Queens trains. Look at them carefully. Each one tells a story of the King/Queen. If there a many crowns this shows the family has a history of being Kings and Queens over the years.

Carpet in the Museum

A Queen's Train

A King's Train

Walls of the Elevator

Outfits of the some of the 100+ particiapting Organizations

After visiting the museum we went to the Foley Train Museum. We had a big disappointment. The model train exhibit is only open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday . Only the Depot was open today. I didn't see anything on the website about this and we have plans for Tuesday and are leaving on Thursday.












 

2018 Travel from Williamsburg, VA to Summerdale, AZ

I haven't written in a few days, just lazy and not in the routine. We progressed down the road with a stop in Aiken, SC and West Point, GA. The site in West Point, at a Corp of Engineer campground was phenominal. With our Golden Age pass all camping is half-price so we look for these campgrounds. The COE's are generally on/around lakes and have big, level sites. A littlel out of the way but worth the extra distancce.

Now that we are full time we are able to take advantage of new types of opportunities. We joined an organization called Harvest Hosts. This allows us to camp at wineries, restaurants, farms and museums that participate. We have stayed at 3 so far and enjoyed each. The other organizaiton we joined was Elks. With 2000 lodges in the US, most of them providing some sort of RV camping, some with a nominal fee and some are free. Many have at least water and electricity. Also, most lodges have evening meals so that works out well for us and gives us access to the local population. We haven't stayed at any yet but plan to when we need a spot.

We are now in Summerdal, AL for a week. Yesterday we drove downto Gulf Shores just to look around. We are very impressed by this area of Alabama, a lovely area, nice roads and homes, the weather is wonderful, low 80s and low humidity. We will continue touring for the rest of the week.

In our wanderings yesterday we loved the colors of houses, the colors remind me of the islands in the Caribbean, very bright and colorful. The surprise of the day was seeing the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile!!

We were also very surprised that there were no tourists, restaurants were closed, beaches are empty, school started a week ago and the place is deserted.

2018 Start of Fall Trip

Today we started our fall trip. Plans are to go to Alabama shore for a week and tour the area plus see a Blue Angels practice. Hopefully, there will be minimal rain.

Yesterday we installed into/onto the motorhome some new toys we bought. One is called Snappads. These are rubber(made from old tires) feet that go on our leveling jacks so we no longer need to put special plastic pads under the feet to limit the sinking into the soft ground. Not a necessary item, just making things easier for us

The other item is a Levelmate. It is more comfortable if the MH is level, we have automatic levelers which work great but sometimes we need to put blocks under the tires or levelers if we are too far off level. Then it becomes a guessing game as to how many blocks we will need. This is a normal RVing problem no matter what type of RV you have. The MH is a bit harder to level than a  trailer and more of a guessing game. The Levermate assists in doing this by telling us how far off level we are so we can put the blocks down, if needed, at the beginning of the leveling process. Again, just simplifies things a bit.

The next challenge as we packed up was our satellite TV antennae wouldn't come down. We were getting a motor stalled message. Not a good message. Tom manually lowered the dish but we will need to address it on Monday morning.

Once the satellite was down we started off on our trip. We always do a short day the first day, just need to get back into the swing of traveling. Everything went well and we made our first stop in  Four Oaks, NC.

Here it is, August, and we have been in Williamsburg visiting our doctors, many friends, and favorite restaurants. We have not sold the house yet, but are hopeful that we will sell in the next few months. Optimism abounds. We did finish packing up what we could in the house, tagged everything we are planning to put into storage. We have sold a lot, the one big benefit to this moving exercise is cleaning out. We just finished reorganizing our storage unit. It is amazing how much junk is collected over the years. We feel good about where we are at this point in time.

Our plans, for what they are worth, are to go to southern Alabama and tour the coast, see the Blue Angels practice in Pensocola. Just a leisurely week at the shore. After that, we plan to go to TX and have our motor home worked on. The part is at the repair shop and we are on the schedule.

Next in the plans are to drive up to Oklahoma and do a good tour of Oklahoma, we have never really visited that state and are looking forward to it. Then on to northern New Mexico and the Four Corners area. If it isn't threatening snow at  this point we would like to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. At 8000' this will be questionable.

We plan to be in Phoenix in late October, first stop will be at the repair place that installed our solar, someplace along the line we lost power from the new bank and Tom traced it to the connector. In order for us to reach the connector we need to take off the solar panel, we don't do things like that anymore so back to the installer.  He is expecting us so that should be a quick stop. Then on to winter camp.

We are going to try a different map of our travels this year. Not going to use Google since they managed to lose all my previous maps(I knew I didn't like cloud storage).

To give you a taste for our wandering I am including some of my favorite pictures from over the years. I started selecgting my favorites and had several hundred, so far. These are just a few.