Tour of Panama City Beach Naval Air Station

We found the condo Thursday night and got settled in for the night. Friday we needed to take it a little easy since Helen was competing on Saturday but we did have some plans for the day.  First stop was Andy's Flour Power for breakfast.

Eggs Benedict.

Then we were off to the Panama City Beach Naval Air Station for their open house.

 

Steve has a very good friend stationed here. He's a Chief and is one of the top Navy diving trainers. They were having an Open House and there were lots of school kids in his tour but he managed to give us special attention. 

In addition to the booths, there were divers in the water to demonstrate.

Most of the kids were pretty interested in the tour and asked lots of good questions but there were a few that they should have left back on the bus.

There were personnel from the Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard there as well as Navy personnel.

There were some hands on demos too......

....they talked Steve into this one. The helmet is really heavy.

The station is right on one of the bays as might be expected so, of course, there were boats.

They also took us inside where we got to see exhibits......

The Chief had to warn the kids several times not to ring this bell as it would cause an immediate evacuation of the building. As you can imagine, a close watch was kept on the kids here.

We also got to see the diving pools where they train personnel. They are very deep and very impressive. we got to see a bit of the training in action. One of the highlights was when we got to hear Rear Admiral Bolivar speak.

She is a powerhouse in a small package.....very impressive.

And she is a well-respected female commander in a world full of macho men. She earned her postion by coming up through the ranks.

It was an interesting tour and really nice to meet Steve's buddy Aaron in person.