Friday - April 13 - Today was another beautiful day so we decided to drive over to Pensacola Beach which is like Hatteras, a spit of land with ocean on one side and the bay on the other. It costs $1.00 to get onto the Beach, free to come back.

We left the park here and took the ocean drive to go over to Pensacola. There is a large bridge over Perdido Bay so we stopped down under the bridge to watch the boats and look over to Orange Beach. The last time we were here there was an absolutely gorgeous multi-million dollar home right on the beach and we were curious to see if it had survived Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and I am glad to say it did. There were a lot of fishermen down there and 3 herons just standing around waiting for a free meal, we talked to one fellow for a bit and he said as soon as a fish is thrown into a pail the herons make a grab for it.

One thing that amazes us is the number of huge, new homes going up along the ocean and numerous huge new hotels and condos, and all are being built up high on stilts. At Flounders, where we had lunch, there was a mirror on the way to the Ladies with a mark as to how high the water had risen when Ivan hit and it was up to my waist. Sure would make a mess of things.

The beaches here are so much nicer than the beaches in Texas, there we found them quite dirty with lots of seaweed and the water is very brown, here it is beautiful white sand, very little seaweed, and the water is a beautiful blue, green. There were a lot of people on the beaches today, apparently it is spring school break somewhere as there were lots of kids - next week is spring school break for this area. We stopped for lunch