The Sunshine State

With our time in the USA drawing to a close we felt we'd best take some time to do nothing. Murmurings from the natives suggested that Florida's pan handle had the best beaches in the USA. 13 hours later the warm Gulf of Mexico waters and white sand beaches did not disappoint, proving a perfect place to get in some beach time. The journey enabled us to tick off three more states on the 750 mile route.




NASA space stuff in Mississippi....




On to Alabama....




Riverside park, Mobile, Alabama. Notice the sign in front of all the fishermen and women states "no fishing"......










Trooping on to Florida...




1st stop..... THE BEACH!! The sand looked like snow, the sun was shining and the water was warm.... ish!




Second priority was some seafood with a sunset view over the sea.




Stevie getting over attached to his food.... again....!







The waves were pretty choppy so Stevie took the opportunity to master his body boarding skills




On our second day we took a sunset dolphin cruise setting off from Destin harbor




There were so many dolphins! If you look closely in this one you can see a week old dolphin next to it's mother (very rare to see apparently!) We were encouraged to clap and make noise as this attracted to dolphins over to us... very sociable creatures.




We also learnt that dolphins sleep by shutting down half their brain whilst the other half controls swimming and breathing. They can do this for 4 hours then they swap to the other side of their brain getting 8 hours sleep in total... Very clever we thought!





Destin was dubbed the luckiest harbor around and the tradition was for the fisherman to show their catch and fillet their fish...the pelicans were just as eager to watch as the tourists!




The not so lazy pelicans were actually doing their own fishing and we were lucky enough to see them in action. Where the warm gulf water met the cooler bay water the bait fish could be found. The pelicans swooped up 30ft and dove into the water to catch the fish

...I managed to get this picture with the pelicans head just into the water




There's a very short video we got too if you follow the link....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR-RCbvyPe0&feature=youtube_gdata_player


It's Gator country in this part of Florida so we had to go to the local alligator nursery and hold a baby gator!




There is a military base near by so we decided to take a look at the aircraft museum.

Control room of one of the old air command centres




Blackbird plane capable of Mach 3.5....really fast!




The last evening was perfect weather for watching the sun set with a glass of wine on the beach. It was quite a spectacular one....













Next stop.... ENGLAND!!!! We know you've missed us........

Location:Fort Walton Beach, Florida