"My Summer Vacation: Gulf Shores and Beyond"

By: Derek Pate

We went to the Naval Base in Pensacola to watch the Blue Angels practice....well we went to go to the museum and then we learned that they were going to practice so this warranted a return trip 2 days later to see the practice and the IMAX movie about a fighter pilot going to training mission "Operation Red Flag". We couldn't take any pictures of the movie and the pictures in the museum were uninteresting so all you get to see is the F18 planes flying around. That's way too many words just to show three pictures of planes, but Leigha is staring over my shoulder making me write stuff.



Later that day our History lessons continued at Fort Morgan. I had never been on a tour of the Fort so I really enjoyed this...seriously. The Fort really needs some State fundings allocated for its repair. We wandered about the fort in some blistering weather...my legs got sunburned 'cause I didn't think I needed to apply sunblock to my shins. In the museum at the fort they had a letter from a new commanding officer in the civil war writing to the wife of a Lt. Col. who had just recently been killed in the war. He was quite descriptive with the account of her husbands death, including details of picking up the pieces of the man's head and washing the pieces and placing them in his casket. Getting hit in the head with cannon shrapnel had to suck.



I fed the sea gulls hot peanuts and later that night I sat on the balcony and looked through the Mega-binoculars at the night sky...and the moon...and the oil rigs...and the beach reclamation bulldozers...and the fireworks...and people hunting for crabs with flashlights. I also looked during the day, but we didn't take any pictures of that.




The End.