So we had our morning cup of tea and then went for an early breakfast and hoped that the rain would stop in the interim but no it did not - shades of our visit to San Antonio.
We left Crestview and headed south to joined the 98 which runs from West to East along the water front sometimes. We took it quite slowly so that we could look at the places we went through but most of the time it was too wet to walk and certainly not fit to take photographs.
After passing the absolutely huge Elgin Air Force Base where we did not see any aircraft we headed in to a place uniquely called Niceville and it was certainly quite a nice place. Then along the coast passing through Destin and through Blue Mountain beach on to Seaside and also Sea Grove beach. In Seaside and also the previous town all the houses seemed newly painted with brilliant colours from green to yellow to browns and pinks and many other colours which made the town look very attractive even in the rain.We continued along the coast past East Walton and Panama City by which time the rain was beginning to ease off. There is another large Air Force Base at Tyndall and eventually stopped in Apalachicola which is an old fishing and cotton town but most of it seems to be under refurbishment. We pasted though several areas of forest where there were roadside signs warning of bears, we didn't expect that. We then passed the international time zone which added an hour before eventually arriving at our Hotel for the evening.
Tomorrow we continue our slow route South with the target of reaching our friends Adrian and Joyce in Indian Shores by lunchtime on Wednesday after picking up a hire car in Clearwater. We then plan to leave in the afternoon for Miami and hope to arrive not too late but as we expect to get mingled with evening traffic our arrival could be delayed. We have decided to have one night in Miami so as to get all the road miles under our belt and take a night and days rest before joining our flight back to London on Thursday night. We will have traveled perhaps over 3250 miles in a short space of time and could do with a day without travel.
