We returned from our trip to FL and are getting our house in order and paying bills. We had a good time in Florida, though the weather did not cooperate much in the last 3 weeks. We had only one partially sunny day and lots of gray skies and drizzle. Despite that we had fun visiting, eating and drinking, eating and drinking, eating and drinking.....
In the panhandle we visited Cedar Key, a small coastal village that's quaint and well off the beaten path.We liked the ambiance of this place and the food was good.....but we worried each time a wave hit....

From there we went to another little town called Carrabelle and stayed at a place called “Ho-Hum campground”….great site and also well off the beaten path. From there we explored the quaint town of Apalachicola, an old and still working fishing village. We didn’t see any evidence of the BP oil spill anywhere on the Gulf Coast, but we did still see some remnants of hurricane damage.

Apalachicola

We then moved on to Navarre and to another excellent campground Emerald Coast RV. It was about 20 minutes from Destin and 20 minutes from Pensacola. Destin was a bit too crowded for us and we didn’t spend any time there. We liked Pensacola and visited a great Irish bar called McGuire’s Irish Pub. Cool place with excellent microbrew beer and friendly people.

We had a blast there.

From there we went to the Pensacola Naval Air Museum…an amazing place with 150+ full size planes in two GIANT hangers. We spent hours there and it was fantastic

Bear in mind these are full size planes….everywhere you looked there were planes…on the floor, midway hanging, and hanging up high.

Naval museum



From there we moved into Alabama to a great campground with the friendliest people we’ve met just about anywhere. They welcomed us into their group of “regulars” who have been coming there for nearly 20 years. We had a very nice time. It was called Dauphin Island Campground.

We liked the area and saw no evidence of oil spill damage, but were taken aback by how many drilling rigs we could see from the beach and how close they were. Sometimes you could even hear them working. Every vista showed another rig. Though the beaches were pretty, the drilling rigs detracted from the views significantly


Drilling rigs close to shore

Local residents

While there, we visited a neat old pre-civil war fort. Ft. Gaines. It was walking distance from our campground.

Ft Gaines

On a day trip we went to Pascagoula Mississippi. We have never seen so many boat building yards and it seemed like all of them were busy.We saw one of the new class of warship under construction. The picture does not adequately show the size and the "strangeness" of the construction. Angles everywhere and odd shapes, which we understand is to make it more "stealthy"



Pascagoula, MS



We left Dauphin Island Alabama and drove to Auburn, AL It was a great college town and we had a fantastic dinner at a small restaurant. Great way to finish our trip.

We drove all the way home the next day to sunny weather in South Carolina...

It was a good trip even though the weather didn't cooperate much. It would have been a great trip if we had a few sunny days.

Now off to planning our trip to the Masters (we're excited) and then New England in the summer, then getting an early jump on 2013 travel to FL.