Our Travel Blog

A clear sunny morning when we woke up, it was still cool enough for the heating to kick in for a while, but the temperature is on its way back up.

After breakfast we headed off to Naval Air Station (NAS) in Pensacola Florida, about 28 miles East of here. This weekend was the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Naval aviation combined with the last display of the season by the US Navy Blue Angels display team.

We got to the airfield around 11 A.M. and there were plenty of people ahead off us, but there was little delay despite the traffic. We got our exercise in by walking from the parking lot to the public area, about 1 mile. There was a static display as well as a flying display. We hadn’t been to a flying display for over 20 years, and things have changed a little. There was no BIG aircraft either on the ground or in the air, the largest we saw was the Blue Angels support aircraft, a C-130 Hercules called Fat Albert.

There was also the lightest US fighter on display, both on the ground and in the air, the    F-35 Lightning.

There were also a couple of new concepts that I had never seen, nor heard of, before. One was a glider, powered by a jet engine! This is the Super Salto, you can see the small jet on top behind the cockpit.

Next was a modified 1929 Waco Trimwing with a jet engine slung under it.

There were other older aircraft there in the form of Boeing Stearman

The star of the show of course was the Blue Angels Display Team.

Although the team was impressive from the point of view of sound and speed, I was little disappointed with the routine. I have been brought up watching the RAF Red Arrows and Canadian Snowbirds. Both these teams use slower jets, this means that the disply is performed in front of the audience for most of the time. The Blue Angels will do a fast, noisy manoeuvre in front of the crowd and then disappear off and regroup. The other difference I noticed was that the display would often fly low and fast over the crowd, which was good for effect, but has been banned in most countries as a safety hazard. There nothing like an F-18 on afterburner sneaking up behind you just under the speed of sound at 200 feet to get your attention.

All in all, a good trip out.

Another cool night, and a cool cloudy morning. After breakfast the weather remained pretty much the same, so I couldn’t really come up a good excuse not to finish waxing the trailer. That, and the weekly clean out of the tanks kept me busy for a couple of hours.

After lunch we headed out for a walk around the resort, it has filled up fairly well with weekenders, in addition to more long term visitors arriving.  Today was the first “social” event of the season. In previous visits there were “jam” sessions on Friday nights where any musicians in the resort could get together and perform. This was the first session of the year. Although neither of us play any instruments we have been go over to listen. I still find it amazing that people who sometimes don’t know each other can get together and play tunes that they have played before just by watching and listening to each other. Then again if your a musician, this may not be a big deal.

Anne, sorry to hear about your shovelable (new word) humidity, but if it makes you feel any better we also had a small amount of the white stuff down here.

OK, so it’s not really snow, it’s where I painted the rear-view camera white the other day.

Tomorrow it’s off to the US Navy base at Pensacola for an air show.

NO, the title does not refer to the latitude (as in the TV programme of a similar name) it refers to today’s temperature. Last night cooled down a bit, and we woke to the sound of the furnace. It was a bright sunny day which is was good as the trailer heats up nicely with sunlight.

We headed out to do the weekly shopping this morning, on the way there we filled up with gas for the first time since we’ve been here. Considering we last filled up about 300 hundred miles north of here 3 weeks ago, that wasn’t too bad! Gas prices were down to $2.74, hopefully they will continue to fall when we get the truck down here.

After lunch little was done, we were both feeling somewhat lethargic for no apparent reason. Lyn did some sewing, and then decided she should go back to Hobby Lobby to get the material she forgot yesterday. This time she remembered!

I finally got off my backside and did some more waxing of the trailer, this seemed to wake me up a little.

Hopefully one more cool night and the temperatures will start climbing. At least it is still warmer down here than it is up there!

This morning was warm and overcast when we woke up, with an overnight low of around 60°F. After breakfast conditions were much the same although the temperature had climbed into the mid 70’s. Unfortunately these were good conditions to wax the trailer in, something I had been putting off for a few days. The waxing went a lot better today than when I had tried earlier in the week.

Lyn, as usual settled down to some quilting, she was going to do the border on the quilt she finished yesterday, unfortunately she didn’t have enough fabric of the right colour, so it was off to Hobby Lobby for her. When she came back she had a bag of goodies with her, unfortunately she seems to have got over excited and bought materials for other projects, but forgot to buy the material for the quilt!

After lunch we headed off for a walk around the park, we stopped and chatted with a couple for a while, Lyn had met the wife at the craft group earlier in the week. We did our usual 1.5 mile route, then back to the trailer. I did a bit more waxing on the trailer and another of Lyn’s craft group dropped by for a chat.

Again it was humid by mid afternoon, but the forecast for the rest of the week is cooler dryer air, hopefully the emphasis is on cooler rather than colder.

Back to the good old temperatures, low 60’s overnight and high 70’s during the day. This morning was a little cloudy when we woke and the clouds continued to build throughout the day. By the end of the day it was quite humid and overcast.

First order of business was to take one of the propane tanks down to the office to get it filled, the use of the furnace over the last few evenings used up the gas in one tank. The trailer has two 30 pound gas tanks connected together by an automatic switch-over valve. This valve gives a visual indication when it has switched over indicating that one tank is empty. The good news here is that I take the (light) empty tank to the office, and they bring back the (heavy) full tank to the trailer.

Lyn brought out the quilt again this morning, so in order to protect my delicate ears I went outside to work on mounting the rear view camera. The plan was to mount the camera and minimise the number of holes drilled into the fibreglass. As it was I managed to get away with only drilling two small holes for the mounting screws. Behind the marker lights at the top rear of the trailer was a hole large enough to pass the camera wires through, so all I had to do was remove the light fitting, cut a small notch in its base, pass the wire through and replace the fitting with copious amounts of caulking. Two small holes were drilled for the mounting bracket, the holes were filled with caulk and the bracket screwed on. Easy!! Whats more it worked.

By the time I got back into the trailer Lyn had finished the quilt top.

After lunch we headed back down towards the coast for an afternoon walk and some more geocaching. By the end of the afternoon the sky was quite grey and the temperature was up to 76F with more humidity than we had experienced previously.

Standard wake up conditions! It was a lot warmer last night, and we were back into the 70’s this afternoon.

After breakfast we took our daily exercise strolling around the site for 1.7 miles. We picked up the mail,Lyn was happy as she had ordered a “surprise” package from one of her quilting stores and it had arrived. Seems the package was full of usable goodies!

Back at the trailer I decide it was time to take off one of the wheels and check out the bearings. The reason for doing this was that I had read a number of reports of issues with the bearings not being properly packed with grease when they left the factory, this could lead to two unwanted conditions. One is lack of grease causing the bearings to overheat and fail, the other is too much grease which gets forced out onto the brake pads.I got the trailer jacked up and then took the wheel off, when I got down to the wheel bearing I was expecting to find a grease fitting which would allow me to add more grease if needed. It wasn’t there! A little bit of research on the web showed that our trailer was fitted with an upgraded set of bearings which were sealed and needed no maintenance, let’s hope that is true. The wheel was put back and the lug nuts torqued to the correct value, hopefully we are all set to start travelling in January.

Today it was warm enough to eat lunch outside again, things are definitely looking better. After lunch Lyn headed over to the clubhouse for the first craft meeting of the season. Even this early in the season they managed to attract seven people, so they were quite happy.

While Lyn was busy socialising I set about preparing, and then painting, the rear view camera I am planning on putting on the trailer. I wanted a camera that was housed in a weatherproof box, rather than the type that required a large hole to be drilled into the fibreglass body. Trouble is, these cameras only came in black housings, unless you wanted to add $100 to the cost. I figured a $3.49 can of spray paint would solve the problem. The final product looks pretty good, the next challenge will be to mount it and make sure the end result is weatherproof