On through Pensacola

Tuesday - I got behind on my blog, and now we are at John and Bridgette's and I've completely lost track of those last few days, but I'll try to catch up.  Tuesday morning we left the state park about 9:00 a.m. and headed toward Pensacola.  The first town we drove through was named "Watercolor," and it was a very pretty beachtown -- high rent district, I'm sure.  Most of the houses were different pastel shades, and all the grass along the highway and lawns was beautifully manicured.

Of course, peeking between every house were strips of beautiful beaches.  There was, however, lots of beach access all along here, and on into Pensacola.  We saw number 98 but don't know if that was the first access or not.  Here's no. 78.

We got into Pensacola and saw the Ripley's museum, and the building across the street which must be part of it -- it looks like it's crooked and upside down.

This looks like another fun beach town, with lots to do for kids -- water parks, miniature golf, bumper boats, lots of food places.  This would be another good place to vacation.  There's also a busy harbor here.

We got stuck there behind a train in town that wasn't going anywhere, so with Lucille's help, we maneuvered ourselves through neighborhoods and back to the highway without too much delay.  These detour decisions are never easy ones to make since we don't know where we are, and we are too long to make u-turns.

We got out of town and continued along the coast.  There are lots of Air Force bases in this area of Florida.  We got real excited when we saw a bear-crossing sign and Joe immediately went on the look-out for bears.

We saw several of these signs but no bears.  We crossed another long bridge (I can no longer keep my bridges, bays and rivers straight).  Again, we had lots of water on both sides.

There's lots of shore birds along all these bridges, and in several places they had roped-off areas for the nesting birds, so I guess it's the season.  It's also the season for hatching turtles.  We haven't seen any but the campgrounds include cautions about walking on the beach at night because of the turtles.  Crossing this bridge, we about got dive-bombed by a pelican -- Joe had to honk at it.

Next, we passed through the oyster area, along Apalachicola, where most of Florida's oysters are harvested.  Joe spotted some guys unloading them so he pulled over and we watched for a few minutes.  They were unloading bags and bags of oysters, and just a little further down that highway we passed piles of oyster shells (a little smelly in this area).

And we saw some of the boats they use for oyster harvesting (whatever that is called).

For most of the day, we drove right along the coast, but we finally headed inland and ended the day at a campground at Old Town, about 140 miles from Tampa.  This wasn't a great campground, but it served the purpose for the night.  Joe drove 257 miles today and he was more than ready to stop for the night.