May 28 Day 4

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Day 4 of our trip takes us to Pensacola Beach, Florida, and allows us to check off another remaining state from our tour list.  We are now officially down to 2 states left to visit, Nevada and California, both of which we will tackle later in August.  

The ride was pretty short today, just 111 miles, which will give us pretty much an entire day to enjoy the Pensacola Beach area, and the Gulf.  First we had to pass through the Southern section of Alabama.

It's amazing the things you see along the road...  I was unsure if this guy was running a yard sale, or just lacks a certain pride of ownership :)  

I think this is the same guy out on the open road?  Could it be the same red truck we see in the photo above? In either case, we passed him at our earliest convenience...  much better than hoping all that crap actually stays in his truck bed and doesn't drop onto the road in front of us.

Our ride took us through Mobile Alabama.  This residential street had some really neat tree coverage, including some Spanish moss hanging in the branches.  This is something I would expect to see in Savannah Georgia, not in Mobile.

Just before crossing into Florida, we passed this battleship memorial park.  This park houses the USS ALABAMA battleship from WWII.

Lennie got this shot as we passed by the park.  Not bad for shooting from the back seat of a moving bike.

Displacing more than 44,500 tons, the USS ALABAMA measures 680 feet from stem to stern, half as long as the Empire State Building is tall.  Armed with nine, 16-inch guns in three turrets and 20, 5-inch, .38-caliber guns in 10 twin mounts, her main batteries could fire shells as heavy as a small car accurately for a distance of more than 20 miles.

Her steel side armor was a foot thick above the waterline, tapering to one half inch at the bottom. Her four propellers, each weighing more than 18 tons, could drive her through the seas at up to 28 knots, more than 32 miles per hour. Loaded with 7,000 tons of fuel oil, her range was about 15,000 nautical miles. The USS ALABAMA was built to fight.

By early 1942 the USS ALABAMA was desperately needed. The Allies had their hands full against the Axis powers in the Atlantic. In the Pacific, the United States was embroiled in a bloody slug fest with Japan, and was still reeling from the Dec. 7, 1941 disaster at Pearl Harbor.

The USS ALABAMA saw 37 months of active duty during World War II, earning nine Battle Stars. The “Mighty A” as she came to be known, safely carried her crew throughout the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean campaigns, and never suffered casualties or significant damage due to enemy fire. After the war, she was mothballed on Puget Sound at Bremerton, Wash., in 1947.

In May 1962, the Navy announced that the USS ALABAMA and many other war ships would soon be scrapped.  In 1964, a campaign was launched to bring the “Mighty A” home to ALABAMA as a memorial to the state’s sons and daughters who had served in the armed forces. 

We finally arrived in Florida, check that off our list...

We noticed this nifty little reminder as we entered the Pensacola Florida area.  These are small F/A-18 Hornets as flown by the Blue Angels.

During the summer, the Blue Angels flight demonstration team make Pensacola Florida their home base. They practice here during the summer between air shows. A typical week during the season has practices at NAS Pensacola on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. The team then flies to its show venue for the upcoming weekend on Thursday, conducting "circle and arrival" orientation maneuvers upon arrival. The team flies a "practice" airshow at the show site on Friday. This show is attended by invited guests but is often open to the general public. The main airshows are conducted on Saturdays and Sundays, with the team returning home to NAS Pensacola on Sunday evenings after the show. Monday is the Blues' day off.

We finally reach the Gulf, and cross a couple long bridges to get out to Pensacola Beach and our hotel.

This is the view from our hotel balcony.  A quick walk through the hotel lobby and out the back entrance takes you right out onto the beach.  The weather was beautiful.  The sun was hot, but the sand and ocean were nice and cool.  Lennie and I spent about 3 hours floating in the ocean.  Late in the day the waves kicked up a little and it was challenging to just stay standing :)

If you preferred to stay out of the salt water, the hotel also had two pools near the beach.  The pools seemed to keep the small children entertained, while the older kids and adults spent time out on the beach and in the ocean.

After showering off the ocean salt, we headed out to dinner.  We ended up at a place next door to the hotel called "Crabs".  The food was very good, fresh mahi mahi, grouper, and of course crabs.

This was the view from our dinner table.  Too bad we actually have to work for a living :)

Lennie had to get a shot of the bike among the palm trees. 

As a wrap for today - we traveled 111 miles from Lucedale MS to Pensacola Beach FL.  This brings our trip total to 1285 miles.  Below is a map of today's route.