Partial Redemption

Thursday, March 28th. 

Lorraine mostly wanted to stay put today but we needed to get a couple of things after yesterdays “devastation” with the toilet fountain. ( I forget to mention that the overflow was so complete that water went up the toilet stack and across the roof of the trailer as well. Lorraine also wanted to correct the quote I used. She didn’t say “what’s that sound” — I think that was in my head. She said “Why is there water pouring out of the side of our trailer?”) I think I am mostly forgiven but it took a little work today to accomplish that. 

The dogs woke us up early — they have impeccable internal clocks and so 7:30 they start whining to go out every morning. Unfortunately, they don’t understand time zones and so here in Central Time they woke us up at 6:30. The sun was still well over the horizon when I relented at 6:45 and walked them out on the trail to the back bay overlooking downtown Pensacola and the Naval Air Station. At that time of the morning the Navy hadn’t started flying much so it was only mockingbirds, starlings, redwing blackbirds and ospreys in the air. The rest of the day has seen all kinds of air traffic however. A big 4 engined freight plane has circled over the camp and downtown Pensacola throughout the day and coast guard search and rescue fly the length of the beach and back practicing something or looking for submarines.

Anyway the beach on the bay was almost empty — two young girls were looking for shells 400 yards away and a bracing breeze blew off the bay. I am losing my Canadian Tone, at 10C I was almost regretting the shorts and t-shirt. I walked the dogs back and we learned the hard way that the plants on the sand-dunes are not friendly — everything has thorns and harsh burrs and some of the sharpest seed pods I have seen. All the dogs were limping by the time I got back and Lorraine had to dig out the scissors to clean everything up. The weather here continues, cool, dry and very sunny with a strong on-shore breeze developing early and persisting throughout the day — I’d claim it was getting monotonous but that would be a lie. At least those of you reading this in Canada are getting a normal Spring — last year while we were away it did nothing but Snow. This year the weather at home seems almost decent by comparison. 

For breakfast I re-heated some freezer biscuits. These can be very nice down here but neither of us really care for the Anne’s brand we had this morning. We’ll try something else the next time we grocery shop. The heat of the oven being on took the little chill out of the trailer as we read the material on the camp and things to do in Pensacola.

We decided that we’d drive down the full length of the Island from Pensacola Beach across Santa Rosa Island and through the second section of park onto Navarro Island and then back across Highway 98 into Pensacola for lunch. The day was beautiful and once you get out of the built up sections of Pensacola Beach there are lovely beachfront homes and you often have a view of the bay and the ocean from the truck simultaneously. We stopped at the limits of Pensacola Beach and walked out onto the beach itself — it was impossible to resist such a stunning day. The water reflected the blue sky, the bright white sand reflected the sun back keeping us warm in the cool breeze. The cool weather kept most people off the beach and we were almost alone walking along the edge of the surf. We walked in the water briefly but it really seemed cold to us at this point — the breeze was obviously churning up some deeper water from the Gulf and keeping it nicely cool. We picked up a bunch of little shells and then returned to the truck. The prospect of not being able to stay forever made Lorraine more than a little sad.

We passed back through the town of Navarre and across the bridge to the mainland and swung back west on highway 98 looking for a place on the water where Lorraine could get a Margarita; this was my penance for screwing up yesterday. I think I got off easy (you can expect Donald Trump to discuss this in a tweet tomorrow and call me a national disgrace). We found an antique store before we found lunch. Both of us were hungry so Lorraine reminded me that we need to be faster at going through these places; no such luck. It was big and different from the other stores we’ve seen on the trip. Lorraine found a large cache of Melmac and restricted herself to only 4 small bowls for $12 in total. I found a very cute and kitschy wedding present for Ted and Lily — we’ll have to get them something more substantial but $40 will give them a nice souvenir of our trip and a nice reminder that we do think of them when we are out of site. I resisted an overly large ceramic buddha for Alex and Sarah — $120US for a piece of Ceramic that won’t survive the trip home wasn’t happening.

Hunger got the better of me and I couldn’t finish the whole store and Lorraine quickly agreed that it was time to settle up and head further west into downtown Pensacola. This meant crossing the Pensacola Bay bridge and heading into downtown. Fortunately, following the shoreline west quickly found us The Fish House restaurant overlooking the bay and some commercial piers. A cormorant and bittern were fishing there, a school of mullet drifted into and out of the sun in the shallows. Lorraine got her Margarita ( and a Second one), I had a mediocre house variety of a rocks Daquiri they called the “Papa’s Hand” — it was too sweet so I settled on Unsweet Ice Tea. We split an order of very good calamari — lightly breaded with cornmeal and some kind of crab boil seasoning with a house made sweet-chili sauce that had lots of garlic and the right amount of vinager. We both had Fish Tacos — nicely cooked Mahi-Mahi with slaw and pico de gallo and a little remoulade. This was just the right set of dishes to prep us for grocery shopping and a return to the dogs.

Although the Margarita’s did a good job of starting to redeem me — my mention that Joe Patti’s seafood was only a few hundred yards further down the shore through downtown and that I would make Tuna Poke for dinner again quickly raised my esteem with Lorraine. Joe Patti’s is the main reason we chose to stop again in Pensacola — and a big reason why I’d chose to live here. It is a fabulous place to buy all kinds of top notch seafood at prices that are reasonable ( reasonable for first class seafood — they aren’t giving things away but much cheaper than Naples or the St. Lawrence Market). We bought Tuna — first rate sushi grade — Red Snapper, and Shrimp. Finding good bread in the U.S. in grocery stores is almost impossible but the sourdough and Italian bread we bought were still warm and smelled of fresh yeast and good flour. If we hadn’t already had lunch we would have eaten a loaf in the store. A few other Gourmet Staples ( we left our bay seasoning at home) and we were out of there with our fish packed in ice in the cooler we bought there last April. Tuna Poke tonight, Green Curry Snapper with Arugual over rice tomorrow night, Shrimps with Garlic Cajun BBQ style on Saturday ( likely in New Orleans as we have decided that will be our next stop — but I’ll write about that more tomorrow).

I finished the day writing the first draft of this blog to complete my 750 words ( it’s almost double that) sitting outside at my picnic table. Giant transport planes and ospreys circle overhead and the sounds of an active, happy campground are all around me; their are a lot of kids here — this isn’t an old-folks RV park. A mocking bird sits in the tree above me and periodically runs through a repertoire of warbler songs too large for me to name — but he’s not fooling anyone no matter how prettily he repeats their songs.