October 20, 2023 Day 13 Miramar Beach Florida to Perry Florida 213 miles
Oh my it rained during the night. The ground and vehicles are very wet. Thankfully the car started without any problems.
The hotel sits back off the main road a block or so. That is good because the road is three lanes in both directions and there are a lot of cars and trucks. They are all going about 50 mph or more. A few lights are scattered along. Businesses line both sides of the road. This goes on for several miles. Lots of condos and other types of fancy places to stay. Roads go off to the south that lead to beaches.
When the businesses finally thin out the forest lines both sides of the road. Now the road is only two lanes in each direction. The forest is pine trees not palm trees. In fact we have seen very few palm trees of any kind. The undergrowth is all cleaned out so in some cases you can see to the gulf.
We actually drove along the edge of the gulf in sections. The beaches here are small but clean looking. Very few people are on the beach. The wind is blowing and the temperature at the edge is a little cool. No big crashing waves. A few small towns dot the area. The houses right on the coast are built on stilts at least a story high. People park their cars in that space. Many of the houses have three stories above the stilts. More are being built.
The halfway point seemed a good place for lunch. We stopped at a boat launch and picnic area. We parked the car facing the gulf. The breeze was strong and cool. At least four different kinds of birds were close by. Two small birds were on land busily looking for bugs. The rest were standing in the water. Must be low tide because the water doesn’t seem very deep.
About the time we finished eating a pickup drove up and let out two dogs. One of those took off running after the various water birds. It ran out along ways and it still wasn’t deep. It came back once but then took off again trying to catch another one. The owners realized they could no longer see the dog. When we left one of them was wading out and calling the dog. We don’t know if the dog returned.
We also crossed some very high bridges across some of the water. Another long bridge was just above the water. We didn’t see many boats out on the water but there were a lot in the marinas. A few large RV parks were on each side of the road. No trees and the rental spaces were very close together.
A car was passing from the other direction. The driver didn’t judge distance well and had to drive off the road on our side to avoid hitting us. A little too close for comfort. We were ready to take evasive action and it was a good test of our brakes.
Some kind of accident occurred down the road a little further. An ambulance and numerous police cars were there. Only saw one nonemergency vehicle. We could not determine what happened.
The closer we got to Perry the more trees had blown down. Numerous large limbs were also down. When we got to town metal roofs had been torn back and many business signs were toppled and missing the name. They definitely had a big wind recently. The barrow pits had some standing water in them. No alligators luckily. Maybe that is just the pits.
We got take out dinner at a southern BBQ pit. They only do take out. They close at 6 pm on Fridays and they are only open Tuesday through Friday. We had ribs that Connie thought were delicious. She had a baked sweet potato as a side. We have enough leftovers for another meal. We broke a local rule and had unsweetened ice tea.
Spoffords Travel 