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So my best friend David has been down at NAS Pensacola for some training, and I thought this was the best time to go see the National Museum of Naval Aviation with him.  I’ve always wanted to visit; they have a great selection of aircraft.  Naturally, a road trip these days means bringing Isaac with me; bringing Isaac usually means bringing Charlotte too.  Hit the jump for a boatload of pictures and a quick summary.

It’s quite fun to have kids who are content to go on drives with me.  And by drives, I mean drive from Knoxville to Pensacola (about 500 miles) one afternoon and drive back the next.  Both Isaac and Charlotte never once complained about being bored (hungry, yes) and seemed to enjoy the ride as much as I did.  They look bored, but they were actually asking lots of questions here:

After breakfast at IHOP, we headed over to the museum.  At first, Charlotte was very nervous, but she warmed up after a while.  Isaac was gung-ho from the start.  Here are some pictures.  One of the highlights for the kids was the number of cockpit displays available for them to climb in.  We showed them how to give a thumbs up when they were ready to go (we also had them hum the Top Gun theme).

Isaac with the Blue Angels:

Me trying out my favorite plane (one of them, anyway), an F-8 Crusader:

Isaac trying out an A-7 cockpit.  The kids would ask each other to hold down the displays to make sure they didn’t accidentally take off.  Here Charlotte is holding the plane down for Isaac:

Here the kids are on a rescue mission in a Coast Guard (David calls them Puddle Pirates) helicopter:

Talking about the F-4 Phantom cockpit the kids are trying out. They thought we were teasing about the seat shooting up into the air in an emergency:

After finishing up at the museum, we headed over to the beach.  This is the first time they’d been to any kind of beach, so they were very excited (that’s the Pensacola light in the background):

Digging a great big hole with help from David (the “thumbs up” idea stuck):

Here’s the whole gallery of pictures from the trip: