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Leland
Senior Member
Username: Leland
Post Number: 6046
Registered: 05-2006
Posted From: 98.218.147.237
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - 06:57 pm: | |
Who knows what sort of promises he made to the crane? It may be moping about heartbroken, awaiting the return of the dashing mancrane who promised to take her away from all this.
And we love the Jacksonville Zoo. Small, but really well-done. We particularly enjoyed feeding the giraffes.
Great report, Larry. Thanks. |
D.B.M UK
Senior Member
Username: Overlandrover
Post Number: 5781
Registered: 04-2005
Posted From: 88.105.77.249
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - 06:20 pm: | |
Larry good report, Poor Crane is probably missing you. Hope your Mother in law is better. Just missed you in Andrews. There was a flight to Andrews a couple days before, but when I couldn't get a room, we passed, and went to McGuire. |
Larry Cranford
Advanced Member
Username: Larrycranford
Post Number: 289
Registered: 06-2006
Posted From: 69.105.81.0
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - 05:47 pm: | |
I found a period of time where I didn’t have any obligations so I decided to take one of my backpack adventures. I thought that I would head for Europe, and just make it up as I went. I do that often and it seems to work most of the time. I’m very fortunate to live about 50 miles from Travis so there is not a lot a travel time involved. I went down to Travis on the 18th of this month and caught a C17 to Andrews. Before I left Travis, I started talking to an 80 something year old retiree and we both agreed that staying in lodging on Andrews sounded like a good idea. He had never stayed at Andrews but I had, numerous times. So we each made our individual reservations after getting our boarding passes.
I knew how to get to the lodging office on Arkansas Street but I checked with a PAX rep. to confirm the lodging office on that street was still there(because I knew that they were in the middle of hotel construction). He said it was still there. The time was around 2100 so it was completely dark. The gentleman and I started walking and I informed him that it was about a 15 minute walk. After we got near the lodging office I started to realize that things didn’t look like I had remembered. I got on my cell phone and called the reservation desk and talked to a guy. I told him that we had reservations and described the place where we were standing( church tower to our right and two ambulances directly in front of us). He didn’t recognize that location. Several cars stopped to try to help us but they did not know where the lodging office was either. I could tell that the office that I knew was no longer there but where the new office was, I didn’t have a clue. I talked to another lodging person, this time a woman. She didn’t recognize, by my description, where we were either. An ambulance went screaming by on the street just outside the fence of the base, making a lot of noise. She said she could hear the same siren. She then leaves the office and said she will try to find us. About fifteen minutes later a car drives up and it is the clerk, in her own vehicle. I was expecting to see a van with Gateway Inn or something written on the side. Her own private vehicle. She said she just started driving up and down the streets until she found us. I don’t know her name but I will be sending a big “thank you” to her supervisor. We probably got in our respective rooms around 2330 and we starting walking around 2100. There are still some wonderful people left in this world. There is hope. I never saw my walking partner again but I’m sure he won’t be trusting any young whippersnapper ( I’m almost 69) again.
Once in my room, I made contact with my wife back in Sacramento. She told me that her 92 year old mother just went into the hospital with a 104° temperature. I didn’t feel comfortable going to Europe if I needed to get back to California quickly so I immediately went into plan B mode. Actually, I didn’t have a plan B (I just made that up so you would think I had it all together). I made a call over to the terminal and found out there was a flight the next day going to Hurlburt Field in a C21. I hadn’t been there before so plan B just now had been formulated.
The next day(around 1000) I walked to the terminal and eventually got on the C21. I was the only passenger. It’s like I was a big shot. A Captain and a Major in the cockpit and me back in the leather seats in the back. I was expecting one of them to come back and mix me a martini but I guess they were too busy flying the plane. I’ve been doing this for a little while but this was my first time in a Lear Jet. The acceleration from the deadstop to cruising altitude was very invigorating and the view of Capitol Mall out the right side of the aircraft was fantastic.
About an hour and 50 minutes later, we landed at Hurlburt Field. But I quickly knew something was wrong as no staff car came out to meet me. I made the short walk into base ops but mistakenly went into the left door, which was the DV entrance. A full bird Colonel opened the door for me while I was falling all over myself with apologies for not reading the sign but he said that was OK. He probably sees people like me driving in Florida in the fast lane doing 17mph all of the time.
I got a hold of Enterprise Car Rental in Fort Walton Beach and made arrangements for them to pick me up to take me back to their office to rent a car for the weekend. I then covered the area between Pensacola and Destin and thoroughly enjoyed it. The sand is the whitest I’ve ever seen. Watched a lot of sail boarding and was tempted to give it a try but it was very windy, too windy for a beginner. I stayed on Hurlburt at the Commando Inn. Upon waking up on Monday morning and getting ready to turn in the car, I discovered that I had left my headlights on over-night and I couldn’t even unlock the doors with the key fob. That’s what I pay AAA for and they very quickly took care of my problem. I think I would fit in around these retirees in Florida.
I got a one-way rental, a Ford F-150, four door and really quickly fell in love with it. You sit up high which is great for a tourist such as I and it was very quiet. Parking it in parking lots can be a chore but I seem to have been able to handle it.
I made a special point of not driving on any freeways. I want to see the areas where the real people lived and I never regretted that decision. I went through the little towns, stopping at most to get a feel for the people who lived there. I would strike up conversations with complete strangers and felt I was very quickly accepted, not as one of them but at least someone who cared about people from another state besides my own. I hope I was able to break some of their misconceptions about Californians.
I stayed my first night after getting the pickup at Tyndall AFB. There was quite a bit a jet fighter activity around the base, even after I went to bed. I miss that noise as I used to live near a base that is no longer a base. I then traveled down to the St. Mark National Wildlife Refuge and got face to face with the alligators. I was taking a walk down one of the levees and came upon an alligator sunning him/her self on the bank of that levee. There was a large bush between me and the ‘gator so he didn’t see me and I didn’t see him. When he did notice me, he immediately turned a 180 and went into the water. I was just a startled as he/she was as it was only about 10 feet of distance between the two of us. I’m sure he/she won’t remember me but I will remember when I go to wash my underclothes.
My next intermediate goal was to get the beautiful city of St. Augustine, Florida. I spent about a half a day there in the historical district. I took several tours and experienced probably the worst and best tour guides I have ever had the pleasure/displeasure of using. The first one mumbled, talked softly, did not enunciate his works correctly and only talked from a memorized script. He had nothing to offer at the stop lights and it was horrible. The other one, same company, was tremendous. She had personality, knowledge, people skills, communicaton skills, and humor and we all stood up when she finished and gave her a standing ovation plus showered her with compliments and money. Any job is worth doing well.
I continued to Jacksonville NAS and spent the night. Very nice room but a totally ugly front door. The next morning, I visited the Jacksonville Zoo and had a great time. In one of the enclosures, there was a sand-hill crane all by itself except for a small African deer of some type. I reached in my pocket for my iPhone, which I have an app called “iBird Explorer Plus”. It has over 900 different birds of North America, including the sand-hill crane. It also produces the different sounds each one of those birds makes. The sand-hill crane was sleeping on the ground with his head neatly tucked under his feathers. He appeared very bored. I turned on the sound of one of his fellow birds and he immediately stood up and started this loud squawking, the same noise that was coming from my iPhone. I did that for a little while and then I used the same iPhone and commenced recording his tirades. Then I started playing it back to him, his own voice and then he got a little more involved with even louder squawking. I eventually left the area to see the rest of the zoo. Everywhere I went, I could still hear him making all this noise. In about an hour and a half, I finished my zoo trip and while I was in the parking lot, heading for my truck, I could still hear his noise.
I then proceed towards Savannah, Georgia but when I got there, it was starting to get late in the day so I just proceeded on toward Charleston, South Carolina. I do plan to see Savanah in the future. No lodging was available so I stayed at the Comfort Suites.
There was supposed to be a flight from Charleston to McChord, Washington but that went away. The next chance for the west coast was two flights early the next morning to North Island, Coronado and I was going to wait in the terminal as the first one had a showtime of around 0300. Then early in the evening, an announcement came over the loudspeaker for anyone desiring transportation to McGuire. Within about 10 seconds, I had the iPhone out again but for a different purpose as before. I talked to the McGuire people and found out they had two flights to Travis. Myself and some others decided that would be a good choice. It all worked out and we went nonstop all the way to Travis and the rest is history.
Larry  |
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