Today was a beautiful day on the Florida panhandle. All the beaches have beautiful white sand and clear water. Pensacola beach has lifeguards, restrooms and a big parking lot with free parking -- which was a welcome change after paying $15 to park at the Gulf Shores beach near Mobile, Alabama on Saturday! The water at Pensacola Beach was a perfect temperature... cooler than the water was in Mobile. I'm not sure why... maybe Mobile's bay affects the water temperature along its coast?
The beach cities around here have water towers. Maybe they're needed to get decent water pressure since the land is so flat!
To get away from the crowds and see nature in its more pure form, drive a little east of Pensacola Beach to the Gulf Islands National Seashore. It has some small parking lots. You can park along the road and follow a path through the sea oats to the beach. There are no lifeguards there, though, and you might not see any colored flags.
It can be hard to find a place to park in some of the beach communities when it is crowded. That was the case today -- maybe because the 4th of July holiday is this week. There are public parking lots with beach access, but they fill. A lot of condos have private parking and metal gates with keypads blocking beach access, so beach access is more limited.
I started looking for a place to park in Destin, and finally found one at the South Walton Public Beach Access parking lot, near Miramar Beach. The water conditions weren't as favorable as they were at Pensacola Beach, though -- the red and purple flags were flying here.
The purple flag warns about marine life. I wanted to make sure it wasn't flying due to shark sightings, so I asked the lifeguard. He said jellyfish are along the coast this time of year, and that was the reason for the purple flag. He also said the jellyfish are usually farther out from the shore and he hadn't heard of any issues at the beach.
The flag wasn't double red, so we were still allowed in the water. I evaluated the wave pattern to make sure I wasn't getting into a rip tide area, and got into the water near a man and his daughters, as well as some others. There's safety in numbers, right?
It came out in our conversation that the man was a deadhead in his younger years -- attending Grateful Dead concerts across the country. When I mentioned that I attended a Grateful Dead concert at Carter Findlay Stadium in Raleigh, NC, he knew the year (1990) and said he was at that concert, too. Small world!
The water was clear and a perfect temperature. When the sun shone on the water with the white sand beneath it, the water lookee a pretty shade of green. The wave action was pretty good, so I tried to catch some of the waves body surfing. I stayed longer than I expected because it was such perfect weather and the water felt great. I was in the water the whole time but hadn't put on any sunscreen. As a result, my face got a little red.
My contact lenses were bothering me after I started driving away from the beach. I looked for a place to pull over and remove them, but the streets were narrow and it looked like my only choice would be to pull into someont's driveay. Finally, I found a paved shoulder just after an intersection, where a bike path widened near the street corner. Looking forward, a bike path was separated from the road by a strip of landscaping. Where I pulled off, the bike path had joined the street and the resulting paved area was much wider than the rest of the bike path.
I pulled onto the paved shoulder and started removing my contacts, when suddenly I heard the short burst of a siren behind me. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw red lights flashing. Police usually like drivers to stay in their cars, but I opened the door while holding my contact lens case in my hand. The policeman signalled for me to come back to him.
He said, "You have a motor vehicle on a bike path". I explained what I was doing, and he asked if I was going to leave. I responded yes, and he let me go with a warning instead of giving me a ticket. I thought he was a bit of a stickler. After all, I wasn't driving my car on the bike path, and the shoulder at that point was wide enough for bicylcles to easily ride past my car.
Tomorrow I plan to visit some Indian mounds in Macon, Georgia, and then go to my friend Vin's house, so I needed to start heading North.
My friend Keri, who lives in Utah, called me and helped me brainstorm what to see in Tallahassee, on my way to Georgia. The Tallahassee Railroad Square Art District sounded promising, so I drove there, but found it mostly closed down. Only a couple of eating places were open. Evidently a tornado recently went through the area and damaged most of the buildings. I photographed some of the murals on the buildings, though. Enjoy!
Keri also helped me find a good restaurant for dinner. We settled on a healthy-sounding restaurant named Vale, located on Madison Street, near Florida State University. The parking meters on the street require paying with a downloaded app. I didn't want to download the app so I parked about 5 blocks away and walked.
I ordered the "Sweet Earth Bowl" -- sweet potato noodles, roasted broccoli, teriyaki chicken, cilantro, and curry honey mustard. It was very good, and the girl who served me gave me a full bowl!
I liked the sweet potato noodles. They almost looked like dark rice noodles because they were semi-transparent.
I'm spending the night tonight in Tifton, Georgia. It has a Planet Fitness and a Walmart parking lot that allows overnight parking, so I'm all set. The Indian mounds in Macon will be a 90 minute drive away in the morning.
Looks like you’re having fun! I need to finally visit Florida and the beaches there. Maybe this winter when I’ll sure be needing some sun and sand.
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