After riding around the coastal areas of Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Palmetto Beach, Alabama on Monday, yesterday we decided to ride the shoreline of the Pensacola, Florida area. I didn’t write about it yesterday because we had planned on exploring the Alabama coastline one more time (today) before I shared with you my opinion.

From the time we started this living-and-traveling-in-our-house trek, we deliberately avoided making Florida our winter destination. Though Florida has beautiful beaches and plenty of oceanfront we have found it to be too populated, too exploited, too buggy and humid and too busy for our liking. When we were last here, we had fun in the Florida Keys, enjoyed our time in the Miami area and of course, loved spending time with Rick’s niece, Chantelle and her family but the rest of Florida holds no appeal to us at all. Our motorcycle ride around Pensacola, with the stop and go traffic, over-abundance of chain store eateries (and lack of independent ones) just confirmed what we already felt. Our feeling is that (sadly) this state has been harmed by years of a huge influx of tourists and new residents wanting to make a warmer destination home. At this time, we much prefer Alabama (at least what we’ve seen so far).

Today we went to the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida to view one of the world’s largest aviation museums, the National Museum of Naval Aviation and home to the famous Blue Angels. Though we didn’t get to see the Angels flying (there were thunderstorms this morning so they didn’t practice today) we enjoyed seeing all the different planes (my dad would have loved this place!) and reading about some of the history. We then made our way back to the Alabama coast and enjoyed our last (for a while) fresh, seafood meal before heading back to the Moho. We are on the move again tomorrow but we enjoyed the time we spent here.