Pensacola, Florida!

It's very hard to believe that we crossed the border into the state of Florida! Yipee! YaHOO!

Early in the morning we left beautiful Dauphin Island on the first ferry, and went past many oil platforms out in the gulf. They look like they are mini cities from a different universe out there. A helicopter flew some people out to the rigs early in the morning. While we were waiting for the ferry, the gnats were swarming us and making life miserable for us. It was good to get moving across the water and over to the mainland of Alabama.

The road was new, smooth, and we really could cruise along. We even had a bit of a tailwind for a while and were often at speeds of 20 mph without much effort! It was great fun looking at the palette of colors of homes along the waterway. There were houses the color of apricots, lemons, wintergreen mints, pink cotton candy, as well as the colors of teal and magenta too. We entered an area called Floribama and a few minutes later we saw the sign for The Sunshine State!

After about 50 miles, we stopped at a bike shop and asked for a good place to eat. We found the Fish House in the old part of Pensacola to be just wonderful. We were so under dressed in our black spandex bike pants and colorful bike jerseys but we hiked our bikes up the steep stairs and nestled our three bikes together along the edge of the restaurant and went in anyways. I tried their special item, cheese grits, and ordered some grilled shrimp. Both were divine! I am not a grits fan, but if you add enough Edam cheese and cream and they were scrumcious! It was a treat to have cloth tablecloths at a sit down table and chairs with artfully placed food with a view of the water.

Tonight we had fried catfish, pesto pasta salad, spinach leaves with mozzarella cheese and tomatoes and a small sliver of coconut creme pie. A quick storm came through about dinner time but we ate in two of our hotel rooms. We
re off to Crestview tomorrow and am hoping to connect up with some friends.



A reporter from Hammond, Mississippi wrote an article about our group last week and it is listed below if you are interested.
http://www.hammondstar.com/articles/2009/04/19/top_stories/8989.txt

Thinking if you in FLORIDA!
Robin