Beautiful Beaches

We spent Monday and Tuesday touring the beautiful gulf coast. Neither Beth nor I had ever traveled along the coast between New Orleans and Tampa. As a result, we took a couple of days following Atlanta and headed for Panama City, FL.

We stopped for lunch at the Surf Hut in Destin. The beaches are amazing. White sand. Warm water.

While lunching we saw a first (for us) ...

That is a ship with a giant video screen showing adds as it slowly trawled along the beach ... billboard at sea. I guess it is more cost effective that pulling banners with a small airplane.

We arrived in Pensacola Beach, perhaps the prettiest of all the beach communities we visited, in time to have an amazing dinner with our dear friends Chuck and Susan.

They have a beautiful home, steps from the beach and the open air restaurant they selected for our evening outing was picture perfect as well as perfectly delicious. It was so great to catch-up, share updates on their two (Paige and Stuart) and our two (Jacob and Jesse), as well as the new married kiddos. We will definitely be back.

When we head this way again, we need to be sure a visit the sand bar, crab island. It looked like a blast.

We will also need to check-in again at The Blind Tiger, our lunch spot in Biloxi Beach on Tuesday. The "reds" were great and Beth loved the bushwhacker!

As we ended the day Tuesday, we headed inland toward Baton Rouge. We found a spot to catch the All-Star game and plan to spend the next two days wandering along the Mississippi River and making sure we visit Arkansas (filling in a few needed states).