Woke to a BEAUTUFUL day . . . but by the time we left for the ferry to transport us off Dauphin Is, it was overcast!!! What happed to the week of upcoming  sun!!

East meets west as Gina and Tom discuss the last several weeks journey with Julie and Mark, from the UK. We have been hopscotching with them since TX. They spent three days in NOLA and had a GREAT time. The fella next to Gina is also from the UK. Julie has been corresponding with him on CGOAB and now just met him in person!!!

Pennsylvania and Virginia meet Wisconsin and Colorado!!!

The literature said there was a restroom on the ferry . . . that is going to be one BIG first step for anyone who needs to use it on the 4 mile trip!!!!

. . . more bicycles than cars on this first 8:00am ferry!!!

A final bird watcher . . . with one big lens!!!

Close up of the natural gas rig we saw yesterday from shore. It’s being visited by a resupply ship.

Mobile Bay only averages ten feet deep so to get the ocean going ships in and out of port there is a channel that is constantly be dredged. 400 feet wide and 75 feet deep. You can see the red and green buoys marking the channel as we crossed it.

Pete the Pelican, and his family, flew over from the condo to greet us on the mainland at Ft. Morgan. Sorry gang, no more handouts!!!

Time to roll off an hit the trail again after three days’ of R&R on Dauphin Is.

We no more got rolling and of course it started raining. I tied up with Paul and TommyH, who had enough sense to get out of the rain, and were enjoying a beignet. I had a cream cheese Danish!!!

We hit the ocean again at Gulf Shores . . . here there were some nice dune areas . . .

. . .but the ride really ended up being about 50 miles of condo development stretching from Gulf Shores to Pensacola, FL

Another sweeping bridge as we enter Florida . . . thought I saw Anita Bryant at the ‘Welcome Center’ handing out Orange Julius’s!!!!

A highlight for me was a stop at the Naval Aviation Museum on the Pensacola Navy Airbase . . .

. . . really well done. ‘Smithsonian grade’ level of presentation . . .

. . . hard to believe this amphibious plane ever got off the water!!!

. . . or this more modern WWII vintage PBY, used to find Rusky submarines.

Great dioramas and cutaways on the models . . .

A mockup of the atomic bomb the Navy helped deliver to Japan. Hard to believe something only 10’ tall could do that much damage.

The Maries are part of the Navy so of course they had to have a retired version of ‘Marine One’. You see this most of the time ferrying the President from the South Lawn of the White House, to Air Force One based out of Andrews Air Force base.

Nice digs, and although it is usually a short ride, it  looks like their might be time for a cocktail . . . especially if you have a had a bad day at work.

. . . ‘Tricky Dick’ had sort of a thousand yard stare . . . may have had one to many as they circled Washington!!!!

I felt like I was in Madame Toussaint’s Wax Museum!!! Creepy!!!!

Speaking of President’s, here is the plane ‘W’ landed on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln when he made the great announcement on Abe’s deck of “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED’, in Iraq.

. . . just wanted to be one of the boys!!!!!

….speaking of boys, here is a ‘Squadron Car’ some of the navy staff passed down from one generation of flyboys to another as they rotated through Pensacola. The Navy does not provide transportation to those in training or on deployments, so many times a hat was passed for funds and whatever the gang could gather was used to by a ‘party car’ used to get around town. Some were ‘redecorated’, so to speak. Notice the refueling tube coming out of the roof on this model!!!!  In the movie ‘Top Gun’, Tom Cruise had a fast motor bike to get around town . . . this model was probably closer to the truth for the fly boys!!!!