Monday, October 31, 2011

Done with Doctors

 

We each had our last doctor’s appointments on Friday, so barring any unforeseen medical emergencies, our next two weeks in Pensacola will be spent visiting friends, doing a few things around the RV, and enjoying the beach.

For those of you not familiar with the Pensacola area, we are actually staying on Santa Rosa Island, a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico. West of the last beach condos it’s about 5 miles to Fort Pickens. Being on such a narrow strip of land, the road frequently gets washed out by hurricanes and tropical storms. In fact, they considered not rebuilding it after Ivan in 2004, but eventually did.

The campground and fort are on the wider part of the island on the lower right. Pensacola NAS is directly across the sound from the west end of the island.

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Being back in the area as tourists has been fun and interesting. Friday night we met Jimmy and Paula for pizza and beer downtown at Hopjacks . A few years ago it was never very crowded, but downtown Pensacola has changed for the better and is really hopping, at least on the weekends. We’re glad to see that happening. In fact, considering all the places we’ve been to the past few years, Pensacola is really quite nice. Except for the summer heat, humidity, bugs and hurricanes!

After all the running around we’ve done the past two weeks, we decided to spend the weekend just hanging around the campground. It was very windy, especially on Saturday, so we just took some long walks and experimented with the new camera. There is a nice couple mile trail that goes through the other campground and then on to the fort. Always something to see.

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This camera has a cool feature where you can pick a color to highlight, which makes the rest of the shot black and white. Out near the fort we saw lots of yellow wildflowers, so Jim picked yellow. The center building is actually red brick. It’s an interesting effect.

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Last night we were visiting with Harry and Mary, the Lazy Daze owners from Wyoming. We looked over and saw this.

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Then it got even better. What a great way to end the day.

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9 comments:

  1. Nice photos! Send us some of that sunshine, o.k.??? oh...today is Halloween so...Trick or Treat, send us something good to eat!

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  2. WOW! your pictures are gorgeous, especially those sunset pictures. I don't think I've ever seen a heron in a tree!

    That island sure looks tiny out there in the BIG ocean.

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  3. Great shots. Looking forward to more pictures with the new camera. It'm my philosophy that one can never have too many cameras (if only I could afford it).

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  4. Boy those pictures are gorgeous. That's a great camera you have. I know you told us what it was but I've forgotten now. Powershot??

    Isn't it wonderful to come back to a place you've lived and find it is one of the nicer places you have visited even if you wouldn't want to move back.

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  5. I love sunrises and sunsets when they're colorful like that. Makes it hard not to get a good photo! :)

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  6. Like the pics from your new camera -- now I want a new camera. Wish we had stopped in Pensacola:(

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  7. Sherry, it is the Nikon Coolpix S9100.

    Jim

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  8. Beautiful pics!! Love the sunset...so many colors just awesome!

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  9. Really nice pictures! Glad to hear all the doctors stuff has been taken care of.

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