Last Stop in Florida–Mexico Beach…

While preparing to leave Brooksville Florida we crossed our fingers when I got ready to pull the slides in. What luck… no problems at all as all four slides came in. It is still a mystery as to why they shut down and did not work at all previously but until something breaks permanantly I suppose we may never figure it out. Anyhow we hit the road north for a longish drive for us.

We left at 9:30 (early for us) and about 197 miles later we arrived at our next stop at Mexico Beach. The drive up along the coastline was delightful as we had frequent peeks at the gulf coast and the calm blue waters offshore. We are staying at another Passport America park in Mexico Beach called Rustic Sands. We have stayed here before and although the park not amenty rich it makes up for it in its location. I like that it is only a 3 block ride on my bike  right to the beach!

The day we arrived we also just barely entered the Central Time Zone giving us an extra hour in the day. We took advantage of it since the weather suggested this would be the warmest day we would have here. I spoke with one of the maintenance fellows in our park who suggested we should explore Crooked Beach. We were unaware of it so off we went…

It was just a few miles outside of Mexico Beach and what a great little find it was. We spent the rest of the day fishing a bit (no luck at all) and then walking a few miles along the white sand beaches. There were lots of shells along this beach and we even found a few new ones we hadn’t encountered before. Also we found several nice sand dollars and even some interesting star fish. We are trying our luck at preserving the sand dollars and a couple of starfish after reading directions off the web.

The next day we also enjoyed a longer beach walk from a small park near the visitor’s center. We walked all the way from this park to Crooked Beach. Since it was high tide and not low tide like we had the day before shelling was not near as well. We began to stroll closer to the dunes on the way back and I started finding sand dollars that I can only assume had blown in from the beach during some storms.

Both nights after enjoying the beach we went to one of our favorite little dive bars in Mexico Beach called the Lookout Lounge. With two for one beers during happy hour this became a great place to visit along with some of the wintering residents there to watch the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico.

We left Mexico Beach on Valentines Day and moved on to our next destination… Foley, Alabama…