Another 2 stops and 6 days
After leaving Slidell, Louisiana we drove east through Mississippi and Alabama to Florida, stopping at the USS Alabama in Battleship Memorial Park, Mobile. This is a magnificent area and memorial site, and can only be ‘described’ by some of the photographs we took walking around.
The battleship USS Alabama; World War II, Korean and Vietnam War equipment; Blackbird, a huge B52, and not least the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Later that day we entered Florida, the tag line on the sign is ‘Open for Business’ and they are not kidding! On the way here I decided not to drive down I110 through Pensacola instead going further east on I10 and going south over a bridge to Gulf Breeze – it was a toll bridge. The sign listed $3.75 a vehicle, so while we’re waiting in line for 10 minutes at the single, open toll booth, I got a $10 bill ready. We pull up to the booth and the guy pointed at the CR-V and said “are you towing that” – I should have looked surprised and said no idea where that came from – but just said yes. “$11.25” – no please with it, just $11.25!!! This is just 2 vehicles, at this point the ‘Open for Business’ sign began to make sense. The $11.25 was $3.75 for ‘Arvey and the additional $7.50 was for the 2 additional axles on the towed CR-V, $3.75 each. Immediately I thought of the famous English highwayman who used to hold up travelers on the roads saying “Stand and deliver” asking for, and getting, payment to allow the traveler to pass. The only difference between him and the toll booth was the toll booth didn’t wave a flintlock pistol. That wasn’t all though, the next ‘surprise’ came at the RV site. On checking in to the RV site we were charged a $12 Hotel Tax – what!!! It’s our mobile Hotel!!!
This is a really nice site, backs on to the Santa Rosa Sound, a stretch of water between Santa Rosa Island and the mainland where we are. There’s a pier and a small section of the pure white sand the site imported to make a beach. We realized that we are no longer beach bums and don’t really want to get burnt to a frazzle – wading the shoreline is OK. We can also see the ‘real’ Navarre Beach and its large hotels from here.
A couple of sea food places were sampled – The Shrimp Basket and then TCs Front Porch – no relation to me. Fried shrimp, oysters, crab claws, fish, hush puppies and sweet potato fries is the local fare, and very good too. A trip into Pensacola on Monday to a meat market that had been raved about on line was a little disappointing – 2 hours round trip for 2 bacon, jalapeno and pepper jack ground chuck burgers. Hope they’re good on the BBQ, we’ll find out once it stops raining.
On Tuesday – it rained – a lot.
Wednesday we went over the causeway to the island – not dog friendly at all so we went back to the mainland. We found a doggie park near the local high school with a trail around it that was a reasonable distance to walk, except it was HOT and HUMID. After the walk we went to TCs Front Porch for lunch and sweltered in the heat, not much cooling breeze but we needed the sustenance (and the beer).
Thursday the weather really cooled down so we got up early and went to the doggie park – 2 laps of the trail and hardly breaking into a sweat, really nice morning. Later for lunch back to TCs again – cool, good food and a beer. Friday morning we were leaving for White Springs in Florida so it was a quick trip to the doggie park, a McDonalds sausage, egg McMuffin then back to ‘Arvey and back on the road.