Florida Mushrooms

Since it’s been so wet, mushrooms are popping up everywhere.  I’d love to be able to identify them (and perhaps eat a few) but I haven’t found a good website for mushroom identification.  Anyhow, they are beautiful to see and make for good pictures.

Maybe Strobilomyces sp.?

Water Battery

The Water Battery (or Bateria de San Antonio) is a separate building that is older than Fort Barrancas but still connected to it by an underground tunnel. It was built by the Spanish in the 1790's. The appearance and details are more decorative than the military look of the Barrancas. Very cool!

This door goes to a room used to store gunpowder.  Personally I think it looks like a wine cellar.   Even the window openings for guns along with the opening for fumes to escape are artistic.  I could definitely picture building a home here (though I don't think the National Park Service would like it).

Fort Barrancas

I love walking the halls of Fort Barrancas.  The official name of this hall is the scarp gallery along the inner wall.  There is also a counterscarp gallery that is on the outer wall.

The brickwork of the fort is amazing.  Plus, in this hotter weather it’s cooler inside due to the  thick brick walls. 

The fort was used to defend against naval attack.  It makes for a beautiful view of the gulf.

Advance Redoubt

Redoubt is a word that I don’t think I heard of before traveling.  It is a separate fort outside the main fort meant to protect soldiers.  The word “redoubt” means a place of retreat.  Since the first time I heard it, I’ve seen several redoubts from different time periods.  They existed for battles back to medieval times.  Apparently I was not up-to-date on ‘modern’ warfare.

The redoubt in Pensacola was designed to fight a land assault against the nearby naval base.  Part of the structure includes a dry moat along with a drawbridge.  It’s been lifted so we couldn’t go into the center fort though I hear there are limited times visitors are allowed across.

The walls of the fort have slit windows to shoot attackers.  The vents at the top allow smoke to vent outside.  Love the shape!

RV Maintenance

RV maintenance is a combination of house maintenance (like refrigerators and AC) along with car maintenance (oil changes, tires).  It has the added wear factor of vibration.  A house doesn’t normally run over pot holes or continuously vibrate with the beat of a bad road.  I think there is added maintenance and wear due to the fact we’re in such a small space.  It’s not like we have 3 bathrooms and multiple rooms to roam in!

At this point we’ve owned the RV over a year and have been on the road about 10 months.  Plus, we bought a used RV.  So we do have to spend time and money on repairs.  The most expensive was replacing the tires (http://tandtrv.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-comments-and-stories.html ).  That was due to dry rot so I think I’ll consider that under the purchase price of the RV.

We had dolly problems earlier (http://tandtrv.blogspot.com/2011/10/dolly-problems.html).  We sold the dolly later (easy to do with craiglist) and bought a tow bar instead.  Again, this is more the price of setting up an RV.

Another expensive repair was the fuel pump (http://tandtrv.blogspot.com/2012/01/life-at-repair-shop.html ).  This was a cascading failure where one problem caused another.

We’re now working on the roof and seals.  John had to completely reseal the RV last summer and has done some more work recently.  We’re still trying to find some leaks since it’s been raining every day in Florida.  We've seen quite of few other RV's working on this problem with either seals or repairing the whole roof.  Once in a while you'll see a tarp over the top of an RV to keep rain out until repairs can be made.

Recently the thermostat went bad for the air conditioning.  It gradually went bad so that we had to readjust the setpoint plus the AC was going off and on at weird times.  A new thermostat fixed the problem quickly.

John also had the honor of replacing the toilet seal.  I guess this is a normal maintenance item for an RV.  Sounds like fun, doesn’t it!

Vibration means different pieces get loose and need to be reattached.  Plus,there is normal truck maintenance. 

Overall I’d say we’re spending less than we would at home.  Our maintenance is less than home ownership with maintenance on appliances like washers and dryers, painting rooms in a large house, or mowing grass that some else mows now or doesn't exist.  However, if you go RV’ing, be prepared for repairs. (And yes....having all of John's tools he's stored in the RV and car has helped!

Rain and Clouds

While the rest of the country seems to be hot and dry, Florida has had several weeks of rain.  Almost every day it's rained.  Mostly during afternoons but it can occur at anytime.  Heavy rain, light rain, cloudy skies, or clear skies...it all happens within a few hours while it's high humidity all the time.  The forecast is rain for the next 2 weeks.

In the RV, any rain is much more exciting.  Heavy rain is extremely loud.  Lightning is much more immediate so that we jump when it strikes close by.  Plus, we are still finding leaks in the RV.  We have towels placed at a few corners.  Sometimes we pull in the back slide when it rains to prevent some of the leaks.  Ah…the joys of RV life! 

The good things are that the rains cool things down a bit, everything is very green, and the clouds can be gorgeous!

In memory of my dad

The most meaningful memorial at the veteran’s park for me was the one for World War II.

Dad was in the marines during World War II.  He signed up the day after Pearl Harbor.  He was in Guadalcanal during that battle.  From Wikipedia “The battle would cost the division 650 killed in action, 1,278 wounded in action with a further 8,580 contracting malaria and 31 missing in action.”  Dad was not hurt but was one of those who got malaria.  He and his division went to Australia to recover after the battle.  Flirting with the nurses too, I suspect. 

Dad was proud of being a Marine. Every summer of my childhood we attended the 1^st Marine Division reunion no matter where they were in the country.  I complained about how "boring" it was, but I got to see parts of the country many kids didn't.  Now I'm traveling and seeing some of the same places.  And they seem pretty cool. 

Semper fi, Dad.

 

Veterans Park

Pensacola has a veterans park with memorials for several wars.  The memorials aren’t exact replicas of the memorials in Washington D.C. but seem to be simplified versions for a smaller space.  The Vietnam Memorial is approximately ½ size from the one in Washington.

I really liked the Korean War Memorial.  The sculptures were well done, I thought.  The park wasn't very busy, but it was a quiet place to reflect.

T.T. Wentworth

T.T. Wentworth has been called the poor man’s Ripley (of Believe It or Not fame).  He made a collection of all kinds of weird items.  Later he donated his collection to make a new museum in Florida.  In additional to a shoe from the World’s Tallest Man and the Petrified Cat, one of the coolest items is a combination brass knuckles, knife and gun (top left in picture).  How did they put this all together and, more important, how did they think of it?

While the clock doesn’t look amazing (though it reminds me of Back to the Future), I loved the story with it. “In 1919, when T.T. Wentworth, Jr., first ran for County Commissioner, his campaign platform included the promise to keep the county courthouse clock running at the correct time. In this pre-radio era, timekeeping was an important issue to voters.  Watches had to be wound daily, and the only reference available to determine the correct time was the county court house clock.  An eight-day clock, it required someone to climb the tower and wind it once a week.  As the youngest and fittest of all the candidates, Tom Wentworth was the obvious choice, and he won.”  Perhaps this is the way we should select politicians now.

Petrified Cat

It’s been called Petrified Cat, Mummy Cat, and Ghost Cat.  However it is actually a desiccated cat that simply dried out over time.  It was caught in the wall of a local home during construction  in 1850.  Years later (1946) the body was found.   It is now proudly displayed in the T.T. Wentworth Jr. Florida State Museum.

I'm not sure if this is the weirdest thing we've seen displayed in a museum or perhaps the "pregnant minie"  (http://tandtrv.blogspot.com/2011/11/south-and-civil-war.html). Both are pretty bizarre!

There are also stories that the cat now haunts the museum.  Supposedly you might feel the cat brush your leg, it may knock down small items as it walks around, or you might see it out of the corner of your eye.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) we didn’t see or feel the ghost.  Hey, maybe the reflection of the camera flash counts as an orb and that's the spirit of the cat floating over his body (or maybe not).

Air Plant

There are a lot of Live Oaks in the Florida panhandle.  These are gorgeous trees with branches that spread out perfectly for shade and perhaps a swing.

The interesting part for me is seeing the Resurrection Ferns that attach to them.  The plant is an air plant and gets it nutrients from air, water, and the outer surface of the bark.  The fern covers the branches of the trees at this park.  I’m not sure how a tree survives, but given how large the trees are, they must have survived years and seem quite healthy.

The fern is interesting in itself.  It can go without water for a long time, some say years, and still survive.  During a drought, the fern dries out and turns brown.  (Sorry, no picture of a dry fern since it’s too wet here in Florida!)  When it a rains, the dry fern opens out and will turn green again.

Summer Escape

Big Lagoon State Park is a great place to get away from crowds.  The park is on the Intracoastal Waterway so the water is much more peaceful than the gulf. 

The park has a small tower you can climb to get a view of the area.  The view isn’t just the water but also the boats traveling the intracoastal, buildings along the water, and the plant life and animal life of the dunes and marsh areas.  We met a couple at the top of the tower and ended up having a long conversation.  They were from California but had recently moved to Florida and were trying to visit some of the attractions in this area. 

It’s been hot (not as hot as much of the U.S., but pretty hot) so going somewhere for a swim is wonderful.

National Naval Aviation Museum (II)

Everything at this museum is big…like this anchor.  There were areas on space, lighter than air, different wars, bi-planes, and all sorts of 'normal' planes.

Plus, the museum had lots of cockpits you are allowed to climb into.  Fun!

National Naval Aviation Museum

We’ve been to several military museums over the last few months, so we had skipped the one in Pensacola.  I didn’t realize how big a museum this one was.  We thought we had seen most of the museum when we realized that there was a second floor and another building.

This is a naval aviation museum so carriers and carrier planes are a big portion of the displays.  There was an interesting film on carrier training in Lake Michigan during World War II along with lots of information on carriers and planes that fold up to be stored in carriers.

Carriers are a LITTLE too big for this museum, but they had sections where you can see specific rooms like the bunk room, sick bay, dark room, etc.  Plus they had quite a few models of carriers to show how they developed and changed through the years.

Summer Rains

We survived not just the gentle summer rains but a major storm (2^nd most recorded rain within one day for this area).  It rained for hours overnight then kept raining off and on all day.  During a short stop of the rain in the morning, we found that many people left the campground while for other families the kids were out riding bikes and splashing in the puddles.  Though I hesitate to call them puddles since some were a foot deep. 

We had some rain come in the RV in a couple of spots but were VERY lucky in compared to people staying in tents. Or like, as in two sites from us, the people had 6” water under their RV.  They were able to find their chairs and tables they had left out but lost their shoes that were drying outside.

Soon after, a ranger came out and told everyone to leave.  The road was going to be covered with water so no one was going to be able to leave if we didn't get out now.  We drove through a lot of water on the way out.

Pretty exciting!