Yukon Time Machine

Suprise Suprise I was first up this morning. Coffee and a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon was in order to prepare us for the long day of driving ahead. It was a novelty having a kitchen that was fully equiped for cooking including a dishwasher. We were out the door by 10am and went for a perv at the beach. It was a lovely morning to dip our toes in the freezing water of the Gulf of Mexico. Though I need to note that while the beach was quite nice with white sand, there was also a lot of gross seaweed that came in with the water line. It gets caught between your toes and if you are Vickie and I, it's a deal breaker.

Once in the car we headed North West on State highway 19 missing out Tampa itself choosing what was meant to be the more scenic route along the Gulf. However for the first few hours of the trip the highway was some distance from the ocean making it a rather boring ride with little scenery. I did what I do best in times of boredom and took a nap. We stopped for lunch at Weeki Wachee where we shopped for a few goodies at Winn Dixie and borrowed their facilities (an activity that was becoming a regular event, I have used more public toilets in the last month then I have in the past year). We ate salad and boneless chicken wing fresh buns in the car followed by yummy sweet strawberries before hitting the road again. It would have been nice to have a wee break from the car but there wasn't much to see in Weeki Wachee and we still had a lot of driving to do today.

We stopped again in Perry after State highway 19 had turned into state highway 98. We just chose a service station in Perry for ice creams and drink refreshments. I went for a Snickers brownie icecream which was vanilla icecream with caramel through it between to brownie like square biscuits which had nuts in them. Very tasty would totally recommend (thought I would add this because not much happened today and this icecream is worth noting for my future reference). Also while in the Servo we saw a distressed 20 something guy who was asking Fraser for help to withdraw $9 from the atm machine. He explained he had $19 in his account and couldn't understand why it wasn't working. He looked gutted when the attendant explained it was a minimum of $20. After leaving I wished I had just given him $10 but then we agreed it was probably to buy weed anyway.

We continued along State highway 98 stopping at Alligator Harbour for some fresh air and a stretch. It was a lovely view across an oyster farm to some beach side homes perched on stilts. We checked out the hurricane marker which was a pole about 9m high out of the ground and had coloured lines indicating the water level during a hurricane. There was a mark about two thirds of the way up that marked Hurricane David in 2005.

We continued in the same direction the road now following the coast and having a great view. This stretch of road was described as "the 'Forgotten Coast', where laid back fishing villages and sugar-white beaches kiss the Gulf of Mexico". There were several holiday homes lining the water from, unfortunately I wasn't able to get a very good photo from the car but all of them new and old were high set on stilts to prevent flooding from the seasonal high tides and hurricanes. We next stopped in a little village settlement called Apalachicola (try pronouncing it). It had a great ocean front dock where we got some photos of a pelican and fish were jumping out of the water along the dock.

Our watches told us was 6.45pm so we decided to grab a bite here before continuing onto Panama City. We found a restaurant called Ira's at Gibson which had old people sitting outside (something Kedar said was a sure sign of good grub "Old people don waste no money on rubbish") and was advertising seafood. It also appealed as an old Southern Mansion. We were seated and noted there were very few people in the dinning room.We had expected the place to be more popular considering the waiter informed us the annual Seafood festival was starting tomorrow and they expected some 30,000 people in be attending. We all ordered seafood and had a really yummy meal with Sam winning the dinner choice with a spicy pan seared swordfish. As we were eating the dinning room became more and more full with people.

With Sam behind the wheel we hit the road again. The GPS informing us that we would be arriving at our accommodation in Panama City Beach at 8.39pm. we continued along State highway 98 passing through some small seaside communities. As we were arriving into Panama City the time on the centre console was reading 8.39pm yet the distance on the GPS continued to read that we had more than 55 miles left to drive. It was then that it occurred to us that without knowing we may have passed through a time change, our consultant Google confirmed our suspicions and despite still being in the state of Florida we had gained an hour.  This revelation also explained why the restaurant was so quiet as we were in fact dining at 5.45pm. We had a little chuckle but were pleased to have unexpectedly scored an extra hour on a long day of driving.

Arriving at our accommodation the Sugar Sands in Panama City Beach we had high expectations. We had scored a 50% discount for a late booking and it was $84 for the night for what was listed as a two bedroom unit with full kitchen. We thought we were in for much the same as we had last night. We were wrong. It was beach front, it had a stove if that constitutes a full kitchen. The beds were separated by a bathroom but no doors. The room was small but clean and considering we would be there no more than 12 hours it was good enough. I would have been very disappointed to have paid the full price. We didn't muck around before getting into bed as tomorrow is another long day of driving. Fingers crossed there are no bed bugs.

Beer of the Day:
Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA - Bottle - Orange, grapefruit with nice sweet malt nose. Delicious and smooth with plenty of well balanced flavour. Far too easy to drink giving its 9% ethanol content.