March 1 – 4, 2015

We left Gulf Shores Sunday morning and after stopping to get groceries on the way, we arrived in Pensacola Beach Florida in the early afternoon. Pensacola Beach is another beach town and at this time of year it is very quiet with mainly snowbirds staying there. All this will change next week though when Spring Break begins for the U.S. colleges and we were told by many store and restaurant workers that they were gearing up for a very busy next 4-5 weeks of Spring Breakers taking over the town and the beach. Glad we won’t be there!! The beaches in Pensacola Beach are beautiful. This is the Emerald Coast and the beaches have beautiful white sand.

Pensacola Beach is located on Santa Rosa Island, one of the longest barrier islands in the world, Pensacola Beach has an old Florida feel with natural beaches, local hang-outs, first-rate fishing and historic Fort Pickens. Pensacola Beach has been named among the nation’s top 10 beaches by TripAdvisor.

The Pensacola Beach Pier is one of the longest in the Gulf of Mexico at 1,471 feet. Portofino Boardwalk features open-air bars and restaurants, shops, piers and shallow water for kids along Santa Rosa Sound. Visitors can access Gulf Islands National Seashore, the nation’s longest stretch of protected seashore, on both sides of Pensacola Beach, making it an ideal spot for biking, snorkeling or kayaking in the summer months.

Instead of biking, we did a lot of walking there. One of our missions while in Pensacola Beach was to visit Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Beach Hotel which we did. I have a goal to visit all the Margaritavilles  in places we drive through on this trip so the hotel was naturally on the list. (See pics). It really was a beautiful hotel. Unfortunately the Landshark Bar there is only open during the warmer weather so we were not able to get into it but we did have a drink at Frank & Lola Love Pensacola Bar and Restaurant in the hotel. It would have been great to have been able to spend a night in the hotel but guess that is just a good excuse to come back to PB someday without a RV!

On Monday evening, we stopped at a couple of bars before going out for dinner at a great restaurant called Hemingways. One of the bars was a restaurant called Red Fish Blue Fish. We entered into this open air restaurant through the side and just went directly to the Bar. As we walked across the patio, there was a group of people standing out there and we saw them look at us kind of funny but we didn’t think anything of it. At the bar, we ordered 2 beer. As one bartender poured our beers, another came up and asked us for our tickets. We said we didn’t have any tickets and we thought he must be referring to discount coupons or something. As it turned out, we had crashed a private event which had taken over the whole restaurant for the evening. When we realized this, it was too late. The Bartender said no problem, he wouldn’t kick us out. So we paid for our beers and went out onto their sand beach area and enjoyed our beers as we sat by their wonderful gas fireplace in lounge chairs. In hindsight, we should have went along with the guy who asked us for our tickets as he was all prepared to go and get us tickets from the reception person. Guess we are just too honest. (BTW – people continued to look at us strangely the entire time we sat there but we didn’t rush as it was so nice enjoying the fire – lol) We ended up returning to Red Fish Blue Fish the next night for dinner. That night it was open to the public.

Also while we were there we stopped at another local restaurant for lunch one day called Peg Leg Pete’s. Of course we had to try out their Seafood Gumbo and we shared a delicious Grouper sandwich. The great food just goes on and on……

On Wednesday morning, we packed up and headed down the road approximately 40 miles to our next stop,  Destin Florida, which is another Beach town – more of the same basically as we experienced in Pensacola Beach but Destin is much bigger in comparison. And yes, in case you are wondering, there is a Margaritaville in Destin! Whoo Hoo!

Will squawk in another day or two about our time in Destin.