24 Dec 2018 - Gulf Islands National Seashore, Navarre Beach, Pensacola Beach and Fort Pickins

24 Dec 2018

Today we headed east from Pensacola to Navarre FL and across the bridge to a long, skinny strip of land or mostly sand called the Gulf Islands National Seashore.  Navarre Beach and Pensacola Beach also live there along with an old fort called Fort Pickins to the west all the way to Destin Harbor to the east.  We went over there knowing Fort Pickins would be closed due to the Government shutdown.  Whether the shutdown will be resolved before we leave here is yet to be determined but we are better on the come that it will not, so we figured we would do this today as rain is predicted starting Thursday through our stay for the next seven days.

It was about an hour drive to Gulf Islands National Seashore, which is America's largest national seashore and is composed of 13 unique areas spanning two states and 160 miles east to west.  We entered from the center at Navarre via a couple fairly long bridges. They were building a parallel bridge which was interesting to see.

We wanted to see the Navaree Beach Sea Turtle Conservation Center which did not open for another hour, so we headed west all the way to the end and what would be Fort Pickins.  We passed through a commercial area at the foot of the bridge and then drove for miles with sand beaches on both sides of the highway!  We stopped at one of the turn-offs and headed for the shore.   

There is a large sand berm that divides the road area from the shoreline and beach.  

There are openings every so often for beach access.  The entire beach is publicly accessible.

The sand is very, very fine and powdery!

The white sand beaches go on forever and there were very few people there!

Doreen picking up shells and hoping for sea glass!

 We arrived at the gate for the Fort Pickins area and as suspected it was locked up tightly. 

About face! and drive all the way back to where we started!   We thought we would visit the Navaree Beach Sea Turtle Conservation Center as was supposed to be open from 1300-1600 hrs today, but it was closed up tightly, unfortunately. 

So we decided to head to the Navarre Fishing Pier area. There is a restaurant and bar and then from there the pier extends 1,545 feet from the shore and towers 30 feet above the water.  We walked the length of the pier enjoying the view.  

We can only imagine these beaches are packed in the summer!

Fishermen use these pull-behind carts to load all of their gear, cooler, nets, etc

Looking back towards the shore

The octagonal end of the pier

Looking back at the bar/restaurant

Local water fowl strutting it's stuff!

Because this is Christmas eve, the bar/restaurant shut down at 1400 hrs today so we ordered an appetizer and a couple drinks, and then headed back to the RV.

We had pizza in the Dutch oven for supper which was really good.  It had been a while since we had done that and the weather had not really been conducive to being outside much.

Tomorrow, Christmas Day, we plan to go to the beach Gulf Shores and then return to the RV and cook ribs with all the fixin's!

I forgot to post this yesterday, but we placed the Florida sticker!  Even though we have traversed Mississippi we are holding that for Charlie and Elaine Philbrook to do while we are at Keesler Air Force Base in a week.  The remainder of the stickers will be placed in the coming months!  When this trip is done the only states remaining will be Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.