We left for vacation on Saturday 10/23, with our only intended destination being Florida. We stopped by Vicksburg to tour the battlefield but the entire Southern loop was closed for construction, so we were back on the road in about an hour. We stayed the night in a sleep-cheap in Loxley, Alabama and headed for Pensicola the next morning. We crossed Pensicola Bay around 8 AM, onto Santa Rosa Island, the home of Fort Pickens. Santa Rosa Island is a 24 mile penisula with white sand beaches on the gulf side and Pensicola Bay on the other. Fort Pickens sits at the end of the penisula looking straight across into Mobile.

From our campsite, we could see Pensicola, Mobile, the bay and the gulf. We had the showers directly behind our tents and the ocean about 200 yards in front of us. It rained a couple of hours on Monday morning, but otherwise, the weather was perfect. A strong north wind blew continuously.

Pensicola is the home of the Blue Angels. They practice ALOT and we had a free show anytime we wanted. We got lots of videos of them, the surf, even crabs!

We took hundreds of pix, collected dozens of seashells and made many wonderful memories. We'll definitely be returning to this place.

I won't say the best thing about vacation is coming home, but it sure was nice to pull into the drive. We got home Friday the 30th, just in time for halloween and lots of trick-or-treaters, mostly family. We got a few pix of them, too.

Surf photos

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