August 20, 2015: A day in Pensacola

We spent the afternoon at the Naval Air Museum on the premesis of the Naval Air Station in Pensacola.

The museum displays hundreds of airplanes used by the Navy since shortly after the Wright Brothers' developed their plane.  We enjoyed a nearly two-hour tour inside one building containing planes from the 1900's through the 1960's.  The tour leader was a knowledgeable retired Naval personnel.

A separate building houses the planes from the Vietnam era through the present.

Less than a mile from the entrance to the museum is the Pensacola Lighthouse.

The lighthouse is more than 170' tall.  It was late in the afternoon, hot, and enclosed with no windows so we did not climb to the top!  It is still in use.

Entering Pensacola Bay and traveling to the Naval Air Station was this Navy ship, built with two huge catamarans on either side of the main body.  We spoke to a lighthouse volunteer who said the Navy was "experimenting" with this design.  It looked very stealth-y to us.  As you can see in the phot there was a landing area for a helicopter.