Fort Pickens, Florida

After leaving MD, we drove south down the east coast looking for some warm weather. After stops to visit friends in Wilmington, NC and Beaufort, SC, we finally found some warm in North Florida in a National Park just outside Pensacola Beach near an 1834 Army fort. The campground and the fort are actually on a spit of land nestled between the Gulf of Mexico and Pensacola Bay. One day the bay side was calm enough to break out our new inflatable kayak and give it a try. It was great to be out on the water. As is often the case, we went into the breeze and current with a lot of effort and then floated back to our launch point with no effort at all.

Our first time assembling the kayak went pretty smoothly. Only a couple gotchas with the sequence of how things are supposed to be inflated.

All ready to go!

The fort is pretty impressive, even though it only saw action once – during the Civil War.

Interesting bit of trivia for military buffs: this gun weighed 13,000 pounds, took 15 minutes to load one round and had a range of about 8 miles. The bad news is that it is a smooth bore cannon so aiming it is a bit random.

Restoration work in progress. It looked like very slow work remortaring and tipping all the bricks.

And, of course, we are always on the lookout for new lighthouses!

This is the Pensacola Lighthouse built in 1859 and is the opening of Pensacola Bay.

It’s a beautiful area to spend a couple weeks relaxing. We’ve also found a great church with some very friendly people. We also went to their Wed night Bible study and fellowship dinner this past week. Turns out the pastor is a sailor so we talked boats and passages for a while before dinner. Made us miss Paperbird!

 

But if not…