Pensacola, FL

There was really nothing else for us anywhere around Dinosaur World, so rather than force some sort of Tampa experience, we decided to split. We drove up the west coast of Florida foreverrrrrrrr finally stopping in Tallahassee where we would have our first Red Roof Inn experience. Not so bad! This was basically an "off night" for the trip, we got some Jimmy John's sandwiches and watched the Celtics/Lakers in the room. No photographic evidence of any of this is available.

Like I said, it really takes forever to get out of Florida, so we drove another 3 hours the next day to get to Pensacola. We decided kind of last minute that we'd make this a stop, but it was pretty nice as far as beach towns go. We got some pulled pork and brisket sandwiches at The Happy Pig - any restaurant with "pig" in its name is a-ok with us - then we decided to take a drive down to the dog beach. This was more or less a small plot of sand on a little inlet/bay, but it was super duper cute. I like these photos of Fred swimming. There are a number of rodent-like swamp creatures he could be.

Puppy stand-off.

After the dog beach we went to the people beach. Of course we did, it's what we do. But we don't go to people beaches to be around other people, so we drive until we can be relatively alone. Just about where the pin on the map is. We drove pretty far east to get there but after we'd had enough sun we kept driving east to Navarre (also shown on the map). We stumbled on a beautiful beach there with a beautiful fishing pier and some surfable waves. I was amazingly psyched, Michelle knew this meant some alone time with Freddie for her.

The pier.


White sand.

Just west of the pier, some mellow thigh-high rollers. Sweet cutback.

Freddie smuggled onto yet another beach where he is not welcome.

Beach van.

Not anymore, ya jerks!

3,000 miles worth of splattered bugs washed away.


That night, we went to a strange Irish pub/restaurant that has $900,000 worth of dollar bills stapled to the ceiling. We drank some micro-brew, ate some boxtys and giant hamburgers...


...wrote our names on a dollar bill, stapled it to the ceiling and split. Strange place. I convinced Michelle we needed to stay one more night in the area so I could surf again in the morning. We have a "Redicard" for the Red Roof Inn now. Awesome.