Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in the Deltona / DeLand area in Florida. We arrived in the area late Tuesday and spent most of the day on Wednesday with Vikky's family. Lorraine and Wyatt have really grown! It has been quite a while since I have seen them. Mary came down in January right after she retired to help celebrate Wyatt's fifth birthday. We all went out to dinner to celebrate Mary's birthday.

Thursday we went to Erik's folk's house for Thanksgiving. There were about 2 dozen people there including folks from California, Maine and Massachusetts. There was enough food for about 4 dozen people and it was all good (I can attest to that). The weather was a bit threatening and it rained briefly, but the day turned out to be very nice and warm.

Friday we all went to Erik's brother's house for barbecue. It was a sunny day, but a bit cool (upper 60s). Of course it was only in the mid 40s at home in Derwood, but we were spoiled by the Key West experience. Again there were something on the order of 24 people and lots of food. By then we had gotten to know a lot of new friends and really enjoyed another chance to chat with them.

Today we got an early start and headed to Pensacola. We drove US 17 and SR 40 across the peninsula to I 75 and took that up to I 10. We enjoyed the drive since it was all new territory for us and the weather turned out to be quite nice. We managed to get past Gainesville (site of the Florida / Florida State football game) without delay. We crossed the Suwanee River while trying to remember the words to the song. We headed into Tallahassee (trying to remember the words to that song) and "collected" the state capitol. Florida has a new high rise capitol building, but it is directly behind the old, more traditional building.

Just east of Pensacola, we headed south to drive along the Gulf Shore. As usual, we saw a lot of new construction and some unique architecture. With the time change, we managed to arrive in Pensacola Beach around 4:00 CST. That gave us the opportunity to take a walk on the beach before we even checked in. Although it was overcast and windy, it was not really cold. It was not the first time we had seen the Gulf (see previous post about Key West) however it was the first time we had a chance to walk on an uncrowded beach. We have yet to dip our toes in the Gulf waters, though. After checking in at the hotel we headed out to dinner at a place called Peg Leg Pete's Oyster Bar. With a name like that you know what I had!

Tomorrow is a short drive to New Orleans. We hope to meander our way over there seeing sights along the way. Unfortunately, rain is in the forecast, so it may not be such a great trip. I'll try to update tomorrow night.