Sunshine but cool. Up again at 6:30 AM to walk the dogs. I had hoped that keeping them awake the night before until 11:00 PM would help them stay asleep until after 7:00 AM, but noooo... Punky just has to wake up with the sun and slobber kisses all over my face. Even if I pull the covers up over my head and roll over, she still manages to burrow her way under and find me. Oh well, might as well get up. At least I got the coffee ready to go the night before.
After breakfast and a few household chores we got the rig ready and the car hooked up. Today our drive will follow SR 98 all along the coast past Apalachicola to Carrabelle and the Ho Hum RV Resort. That's really their name. The road was good through Fort Walton Beach and across the Miracle Strip Parkway into the city of Destin.
This is a really beautiful city catering to wealthy vacationers, where everything is new and clean and the landscaping is impressive and expensive and it stretches for miles. Past Destin, the large hotels and vacation condos continue through Miramar Beach and into Santa Rosa before you get to undeveloped landscape. Even here though, the highways are four lanes divided with huge medians and flanked by well maintained grassy verges thirty to forty feet wide. There is no trash on the sides of the road. Really an impressive area.Continuing south we came to Panama City Beach which has two main highways through it. One is called Front Street and runs along the gulf coast. The other is called Back Street and is about five blocks away from the water, parallel to Front Street. Back Street is the main highway though town with few stops. Front Street provides access to all the beaches and hotels. We stayed on Back Street and crossed Upper Grand Lagoon into Panama City where we stayed on SR 98 and wound through town eventually crossing the Tyndall Parkway and driving through Tyndall AFB.
Leaving Tyndall AFB we stopped at a small roadside pullout in the town of Mexico Beach. Tina made us ham and cheese sandwiches with sliced tomatoes, cottage cheese and fresh strawberries. While I cleaned up, Tina went for a walk on the beach. After lunch we got back on the road and continued south. Before long we pulled into Port St Joe and were stopped by a police roadblock. It was a parade in honor of Martin Luther King with lots of kids, fire trucks and townsfolk in their cars. As the last car turned the corner to pull onto SR 98 in front of us, the police car pulled in behind it and we fell in behind the police car as we paraded through town.
As we came to the end of town and turned the corner we saw where a recent fire had caused the walls and roof of two buildings to collapse. Leaving Port St Joe we continued to Apalachicola and crossed the John Gorrie Memorial Bridge. From here on all the way to Carrabelle Beach there were road crews out working to put rick rack down along the beachside bank of the road. We probably had five occasions where the road went to one lane, and in between the road edge was torn up and cones were placed on the road making a very narrow lane. We stayed right at 35 mph for safety due to the edge drop off and oncoming traffic. But it wasn't any real problem just slowed things down.
We passed through Carrabelle Beach and three miles further on pulled into the Ho Hum RV Park. Since we are scheduled for a three week stay in Tarpon Springs, a 177 mile drive, we'll get an early star and continue on our way.To see all our pictures from today, click on:
Todays leg, 147 miles. Total for the trip so far, 4,724 miles.
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