Panhandling

2025-04-07
Tuskegee AL and Watersound FL

I started today with a stop at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. The site is at Moton Field, where the pilots learned to fly before moving to Tuskegee Army Base for combat training. Here they trained the first black pilots and plane crews in the US Army. It was still a segregated south, and they faced an uphill battle with prejudice. Four squadrons of black airmen flew fighter missions in the European theatre.

The site itself is two hangers and a few outbuildings that were part of the original flight school. They have a couple of the types of planes used for training, and a P-51 Mustang "Redtail" that was used in the combat squadrons.

This type of plane was used to teach basic piloting

P-51 Mustang. Red tail was an aftermarket option.

After the museum, google took me through downtown Tuskegee. It seems to be a struggling small town, but maybe there are areas I didn't see.

Next I headed to Watersound on the Florida Panhandle to visit another former colleague, Adam. I met him at his house, and we went to Camp Helen State Park. This is home to a "coastal dune lake" which are relatively rare, existing in just a few places including New Zealand, Australia, Madagascar, and along the coasts of Oregon, South Carolina, and Northwest Florida. Lake Powell, like all dune lakes, is generally brackish due to the mixing of fresh and salt water. Periods of high rain can make the lake flow into the Gulf, but then after the rains the gulf will flow back into the lake making it more brackish. In better weather I would have had out my bird lens.

We walked about a mile or so on the trails, visiting the gulf on a rare "double red" day. Of course, since it was my first time, I'd never been to the gulf on a day that wasn't a double red. The flags just mean that not only is there no swimming (first red flag), you will be fined for doing said swimming (second flag).

I guess double red is so rare that they don't put another eye on the pole for the second flag.

The weather remained dicey, so we stopped for a beer (my first since Knoxville) and continued to catch up. Adam seems to be doing well, and he has definitely gotten into the groove of retirement. He has focused his retired life on his family, spending a lot of time with his daughters including all their softball games. It was great to listen to talk about his family as it really lit him up. After a little more sightseeing and supper with Adam, I did get to see Ella, Lily, and Mitzi for a little while as well as Mitzi's mom Sarah (who I last saw at their wedding) before hitting the road. I certainly could have talked to all of them for hours more.

I headed off into the sunset to Pensacola. I got to see a bit of the Gulf Coast Barrier Islands before dark settled in, and said hi to a metric crapton of traffic lights.