Goofing off on the Gulf

The last week has been a potpourri of activity and some rest, but I must tell you at the beginning that I figured out the simple math issue I wrote about (and pictured!) in my last posting (the scale model thing on the USS Lexington).  There really was nothing to figure; apparently I just had a couple of neurons that didn't connect right the first three hundred times I stared at it.  Now I am left with shame and embarrassment, but fortunately the only people in the universe who could know about it are those who have access to the Internet.  Whew!  I suppose I could go back and edit it out, but then only people whom I really care about would know.  So why not let perfect strangers who stumble upon my blog have a little fun, too?

We are staying in a Residence Inn in Sandestin, Florida, which is next to the better known Destin, Florida. This is the "Emerald Coast" of Florida: fine, white sand beaches and clear emerald water stretch along for miles.  The whole coast is dotted with small (and some larger) communities that pretty much run into each other.  Driving west from here for less than an hour, one reaches Pensacola, which, I was surprised to learn, is a very old city with a rich history.  Driving isn't particularly interesting when one can't see the ocean--it's all commercial, either hotels and condos, or retail, with little evidence of planning (South Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls; Central Entrance in Duluth etc.).

But, of course, retail isn't all bad!  Next door to us, the "Grand Boulevard" center has many mid-scale stores and seven or eight nice restaurants...and then down the road is a fine outlet mall that we have visited several times. That is, to be accurate, I shop and Bill listens to ESPN in the car.

We have spent two days with Bill's first cousin Bill Bremser and his wife Greta.  Bill was born in 1933 and grew up in St. Louis, so he was gone from home as Bill came of age, but they have renewed their cousinly relationship in the past few years.  Bill B.'s father took him on an outing to Westminster College (Fulton, Missouri) in 1944 and thus Bill was THERE when Winston Churchill made his "Iron Curtain" speech.  After Cousin Bill retired from the Navy, he and his wife settled in Pensacola, and so we toured the museum of naval aviation and had a great time.  Here I am, at right, standing next to a Sikorsky helicopter.
I, Martha Sikorski Sozansky, am not related to Igor Sikorsky, but I wouldn't trade my dad John Wilbur Sikorski, for anyone else anyway. Ironically, my father and Igor died 11 days apart in October of 1972.

But I have not told you the most exciting thing to me about our visit with Bill and Greta.  They have been watching birds forever and have seen almost everything, and took us on two days of looking for birds.  I got seven or eight new id's, including  two new gulls and a Prothonotary Warbler, and we saw something very cool:  a loon in "breeding plumage:" Very boring-looking, before he makes his way to Minnesota or Wisconsin and turns fabulous in basic black and white.  These cousins were very, very good to us to help us find and identify several birds that are either here year 'round or who are on their way north.  As a birdwatcher, I am not competitive, nor do I have a life list, and I get as much thrill from seeing great birds I've known for decades--as I do from a new identification.  That's why I asked Bill to take the photo of the Great Blue Heron at left, above.  He (or she) walked back and forth along the shore hunting for fish, and was at times less than 10 feet from us--but didn't care at all.

We leave tomorrow to start back to Duluth, but we may have some more adventures: The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta tomorrow (only 5 hours away!), Lookout Mountain and lunch at the Cafe on the Corner on Monday, and some time with our friends in Dubuque, Iowa.  We hope to avoid the next blizzard in Duluth, due early next week.