Let's Catch Up

Let me get you from New Orleans to Pensacola Naval Air Station, where we arrived yesterday. We basically back-tracked from New Orleans to Biloxi - a very long day. Since we have already talked about that, I didn't take any photos (I knitted instead). We took a slightly different route from Biloxi to the Mobile area. Instead of going up Mobile Bay, we crossed the bay and went to Gulf Shores.The scenery is now looking quite a bit like home, except that there is lots of commercial barge traffic.

The day ended at a marina that featured Lulu's, a restaurant owned by Jimmy Buffett's sister Lucy. The whole complex is new and is a great place for families to come in warm weather. The whole place is set in deep white sand, with palm trees, volleyball nets and lots of lawn chairs. There is a shrimp sculpture next to volley ball court that is really cool. The Mountain of Youth is a "ropes" course that you can climb with a safety harness. It's not open right now because it's cold and the place is not crowded, but it would be fun to see kids climbing all over it!

Lulu's is the restaurant and it was a fun place to eat. I enjoyed the live music and Lulu's signature beer, Weird Sista Honey Ale. The windows all around the outside are big garage doors - they can all be opened when the weather is nice to let in the fresh air. We left the next morning headed for Pensacola.

We've been blessed with calm seas the last two days as we crossed some fairly big stretches of water. Some of the way was in canals and creeks. We are seeing lots of homes along the way and big hotels in the distance. One condo and marina complex had a ferris wheel! We also saw the homemade raft again that we first saw on the Tom Bigbee. Those folks had to be freezing! We crossed into Florida and started seeing bluer water, lots of porpoises and some nice sand dunes. The porpoises love our bow wake and even the side wakes. The cool thing here is that the water is so clear you can see them plainly underwater. I just love porpoises!

We arrived at the marina here at Pensacola Naval Air Station yesterday and will stay here for a few days. It's time to resupply and do some Christmas shopping. There is also a naval museum here, and the town of Pensacola. We will keep you posted and add updates as we head east across the panhandle of Florida.

Leaving New Orleans

Down the industrial canal

Don't know what this is, along the industrial canal

Coming up alongside a dredge

The pipes for the dredge, with a freeloader

This is starting to look like Savannah

And even marsh!

Coming into Lulu's

The Mountain of Youth

Love the shrimp

A ferris wheel at a marina down the canal

Coming up on the raft

We're in Florida now - and will be for a while!

Mom and a baby. You can see them well even under water

Getting close to Pensacola

There were four or five of them riding our side wake

There were five of them all trying to ride the bow wake