Florida Panhandle in January

There is no one here. Too bad. The weather is "fresh", lets call it, but still very pleasant for January 2012. We left Mobile last Wednesday and have gently bumped our way across Mobile Bay in absolute calm waters and over to Pensacola, then to Panama City.

Pensacola has done a very nice job of revitalizing its downtown. It is one of the oldest cities in the US, where settlements actually predated St. Augustine over on the east coast. We stayed at the Palafos Pier Marina and had the place to ourselves. Many boats just sitting waiting for their owners to return, but no one else were on board their boat.

I actually got Shelley to spend an entire day at a museum. And what a great place to do it. We took a taxi out to the Pensacola Naval Air Station and its Aviation Museum. It is the largest collection of naval airplanes anywhere. It is free to enter and all the work on restoring these beautiful planes has been done by volunteer Naval Aviators over many years. They have the very first planes that Clyde Cessna and Mr. Curtiss built for use in the water. The Navy has had a version of just about every aircraft made to be able to land on a carrier. Plus the museum has many of the Blue Angel aircraft, which are based at Pensacola. The Blue Angels practice here every Tuesday and Wednesday when they are in town. Unfortunately for us, they are out in California this month. The museum was well worth while.

From their it is an easy couple of hours east to Ft. Walton Beach. What we discovered is that there are very few marinas, especially out on Santa Rosa Island, which makes up the beach off of Ft. Walton. Why you might ask? Hurricane Ivan in 2004 did a number on this area. Pretty much wiped out every marina and building on the beaches. So we had to go up the bay quite a few miles, near Eglin Air Force base to find a really lousy marina. But it was just for overnight.

This marina's only good thing was the use of a loaner car which we used to drive back out to the beach for dinner at a very touristy place called the Crab Shack. Normally in season this place would be packed. We almost had it to ourselves except for 8 air force guys drinking on the beach on their day off. The loaner car was exciting. It was a 1970 VW Cabriolet (convertible). The top was torn and was being held together by some duck tape which made an awful noise flapping at 40 mph. That was its maximum speed as the wheels were so rusted they would hardly turn, and the power steering groaned at every move. The driver seat was so broken and laid back, that the owner had left a big pillow in the seat which was the only way to sit up while driving. But it got us to the beach for dinner and back.....barely.

This time of year, every morning brings in a very dense fog layer until 10:00 am. It is pretty but hard to navigate through. So it really shortens your day when it gets dark at 5:00 and you cannot get going until 10:00. But we made it the 60 miles to Panama City and to the Bay Point Marina. This is a very nice marina full of lifeaboards. We will leave Rock Chalk here while we go back to Austin to close on the house. The weather is warm and this is a great time of the year to be cruising the Florida panhandle.