Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park

Olustee Battlefield is commemorated by the Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park, a part of the Florida State Park system. This park is located within the Osceola National Forest, on U.S. 90. The actual battlefield consists of the state park, part of the national forest and privately held land on the south side of U.S. 90. There is an annual historical reenactment that takes place on the site of the battle, and nearby Lake City (in Columbia County) has hosted the yearly Olustee Battle Festival (a separate event) since 1976.

In February 1864, Major General Quincy A. Gillmore, commander of the Union's Department of the South at Hilton Head, South Carolina, ordered an expedition into Florida to secure Union enclaves, sever Confederate supply routes (especially for beef and salt), and recruit black soldiers. Brigadier General Truman Seymour, in command of the expedition, landed troops at Jacksonville, in an area already seized by the Union in March 1862. Seymour's forces then made several raids into northeast and north-central Florida.

Museum of Aviation (Warner Robins)

The United States Air Force Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base is the second-largest aerospace museum of the USAF. The great thing about the museum is that it is located outside of the military installation, so there is no hassle with providing ID, proof of insurance and all of the other things required to drive your vehicle onto a base.

The museum is completely free, has multiple hangars with different period airframes on display, has an outdoor area of larger craft and has many individual vignette displays of various aspects of winged flight. The café on the third floor of the main building is sufficient for the task with reasonable prices, and the air conditioning in the large hanger areas is for the most part comfortable.

Fort Rucker, Alabama

This weekend my wife and I took a trip to Alabama to visit the United States Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, which boasts the largest collection of helicopters held by a museum in the world. While there were many helicopters for public view, what is notable is the number of WWI and WWII airplanes on display. While some were first-rate replicas, others were original airframes.

There are several aircraft on the exterior of the museum facility, mostly the larger aircraft that would be difficult to house indoors, such as the de Havilland Canada YAC-1 Caribou tactical transport airplane and the Sikorsky CH-54A Tarhe "Sky Crane" heavy-lift cargo helicopter. These are in various states of repair, and only the Caribou had any type of an identification marker to identify what the exhibit was.