November 28, 2011 by steve.

Just a couple of weeks after Halloween and the CurbCrushers are headed to Mr. CurbCruhser’s hometown of Pensacola, Florida. This historic City of Five Flags was actually settled prior to St. Augustine, but the Spaniards that set up housekeeping on the barrier island got introduced to the Gulf of Mexico weather phenomenon known as a hurricane and found their boats sunk, and their huts washed away. Fortunately, the CurbCrusher family settled there quite some time later when people had learned to build houses inland.

In addition to Veteran’s Day being a nationally recognized day of remembrance, for a number of years the Navy’s Blue Angel Flight Demonstration Team has held a homecoming air show at Sherman Field in Pensacola. There also happens to be a campground right across the street from Sherman Field by the name of Oak Grove, run by the recreation and welfare folks at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Through good fortune and the service of Father CurbCrusher (Mr. CurbCrusher’s Dad), we were able to make a family trip out of this and stay at Oak Grove during Veteran’s Day Weekend.
We arrived on Thursday afternoon, after the drive up from Orlando and got ourselves situated in the park. The trip was uneventful, and that’s how we like our trips. We did have a new toy to play with on the trip, a Droid Bionic phone from Verizon. Using he mobile hotspot feature, we kept an Internet connection for pretty much the entire trip, and Little CurbCrusher was happy to sit in the back on her iPod and chat away with friends while we drove. Lady CurbCrusher was able to Google stuff anytime she wanted on the trip, and we even streamed some radio along the way when the local station’s programming was wanting.

We started our Friday with breakfast, then packed our chairs into the cart and hiked over to the air show. We spent a good part of the morning wandering around the static displays. Lots of planes and stuff on display, and plenty to keep busy. The show portion started around 10am with a number of acts like Otto the Helicopter clown, Shockwave the Jet Truck, and a couple of heritage flights.

After a full morning of air show acts, and a good bit of the afternoon, around 2:30pm or so the main act got under way with the Blue Angels. Awesome show!

All the pictures from the airshow are on my Flickr stream.

Well, that wasn’t enough for one day. We walked back to the RV for dinner, then headed back over to the flight line for the night show. The Blue Angels don’t fly in the night show, and I was sort of wondering what a night air show would be like, and what could you see. It was pretty cool actually. A couple of the acts flew and had pyrotechnics that launched from the wings. The Shockwave Jet Truck made another appearance and the night ended it the wall of fire. All of the night show photos can be found here.

After a full day, and part of a night, at the air show, we slept late on Saturday morning. Following a leisurely breakfast, we headed out to Big Lagoon State Park located just west of the Navy base (Pictures). We also made a trip over to Ft. Pickens and checked out the campground. We had not stopped by Ft. Pickens since 2004, when we camped there right after Hurricane Charley had hit us in Orlando, but before Hurricane Ivan struck Pensacola. Ivan had pretty much destroyed the road to Ft. Pickens, along with damaging other parts of the park. Ft. Pickens has been open and operating for a while and looks like it should be a great place to camp again.

Sunday started early. Mr. CurbCrusher came up with a crazy idea last January. He and his Uncle should enter the Disney Goofy Challenge in January 2012. The Goofy Challenge is where you pay way too much money to have the privilege of running a half-marathon on Saturday and a full Marathon on Sunday at Disney World. The second part of the idea was to challenge Father CurbCrusher to run the half-marathon. Well, its been almost a full year of preparation and all the participant were in Pensacola, and they were having a marathon and a half-marathon. So we all entered the half-marathon for a nice brisk run. We all had a nice run and everyone finished within the cut off time. The pictures are not on Flickr yet, but I’ll come back and edit the post when they are.

So, what do you do after running a half-marathon. Go climb a lighthouse. Lady CurbCrusher had climbed the Pensacola light house before, but Mr. CurbCrusher and Little CurbCrusher had not. So we walked the half mile over to the lighthouse and climbed to the top. The view is wonderful, and the museum is pretty good also. Lighthouse pictures are here.

Posted in RV Stuff, Travel Review | No Comments »

November 5, 2011 by steve.

It’s Halloween again, and the CurbCrushers are headed to Fort Wilderness, the Disney campground experience. We’ve spent the last couple of years at “the Fort” for Halloween, and decided that this year would be no different. Lady and Little CurbCrusher headed out early, while I worked a few more hours so that we could afford the gas in the motorhome for the 26 mile trip. Since they went out around 9:30am, they experienced something we’d never seen before, no line at the gate. Of course it still took 20 minutes to check-in, but hey you didn’t have to wait for a bunch of folks.

Of course they had an ulterior motive for heading out early, a short trip to the Magic Kingdom. They took the boat over to the Magic Kingdom and rode a couple of rides and wandered around the shops until I arrived around 1:30. After getting the motorhome parked, we headed over to EPCOT to enjoy the Food and Wine Festival one last time before our passes expired. We had planned to stay until the fireworks, but after eating our way around the world, we headed back to Fort Wilderness around dark. We made two or three trips to EPCOT for the Food and Wine Festival this year, and all the Food and Wine pics can be found here.

Back at Fort Wilderness, we had dinner and then wandered over to the Port Orleans Riverside resort to see Piano Bob. Lady CurbCrusher had read about Piano Bob on another website, and thought we should go visit. Bob does a good show, he interacts with the audience, and sings “old people” music according to Little CurbCrusher. However, we all had a good time. I don’t know if I could take Bob every night, but its probably a good once a year show to catch. The service is so bad in the lounge, that the show turns out to be free. If you can find a waiter, you can order drinks, but we had a hard time getting the attention of the two guys working the room. We ordered something to drink twice, and the second time it took about 40 minutes to have them served. So, take a bottle of water, go and enjoy the show.

We started the next day out decorating our site. As you see to the left, its not really a lot of decorating, compared with what some of the folks do (see below), but we put out a few things and tried and get into the spirit of the holiday. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the Fort, and ended the day with a Giddy-up-and-go package from the food place down near the marina. This is basically like visiting a KFC, Disney style. The day ended with a friend of Little CurbCrusher’s showing up to spend the rest of the weekend, and Halloween with us.

Two big things happen at the Fort over Halloween, the Golf cart parade and the trick-or-treating. There are a number of activities that take place, and rather than writing all about them, I’ll just illustrate them below.

Pumpkin Carving Contest

Golf Cart Parade

The Pet Parade

Trick or Treating Candy delivered by train

Needless to say we all had a great time at Fort Wilderness. We were up early the day after Halloween and packed for the long 26 mile trip home. To see all the photos we took at the Fort, visit the CurbCrusher PhotoStream on Flickr.

Posted in Blogroll, RV Stuff, Travel Review, Campground Review | No Comments »