About the Area

Pensacola and the surrounding area have much to offer the Modelfest participant before and after the contest:

 

The National Naval Aviation Museum located onboard Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola.  It is the world's largest collection of naval aircraft in existence, tracing the origins of naval aviation in the U.S. from 1911 through two world wars and a dozen lesser conflicts.  The history of Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard aviation is on display for you to see and feel up-close.  Aircraft on display are not roped off as is common practice in other museums, and the museum is full of interactive historical exhibits.  

 

Pensacola Lighthouse - Also located aboard NAS Pensacola.  This is the western-most of Florida's "Lighthouse Trail" and is open to the public.

 

Pensacola Beach and Santa Rosa Island.  Famous for its sugar-white sands (thanks to the quartz-rich runoff of the Apalachicola River to the east), Pensacola Beach and the adjoining Gulf Islands National Seashore Park offers miles of pristine coastline for swimming, fishing or beachcombing.

 

Dining - Pensacola and Pensacola Beach offer some of the Gulf Coast's finest seafood restaurants, including The Fish House, The Oar House, McGuire's Irish Pub, Hemingway's, Flounder's, Peg-Leg Pete's, Nick's Boathouse and Crab's - We Got 'Em.

 

USS Alabama Battleship Park - in nearby Mobile, Alabama.  Features one of only two surviving Indiana-class battleships of WWII preserved as museums in the U.S.  The park also has an aircraft display hangar and the USS Drum, a Gato-class fleet submarine, also a decorated WWII warship.

 

U.S. Air Force Armament Museum - at nearby Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton Beach.  Features an impressive display of major Air Force aircraft including the B-52, B-47, SR-71 and AC-130, in addition to a host of bombs and missiles developed at the base during WWII and the Cold War, and the amazing personal gun collection of veteran U.S. Congressman Bob Sikes.