I am back from three days in Pensacola, feeling refreshed and ready to finish out the year in style. I intended to spend four days in Pensacola, but a flat tire in the middle of nowhere consumed a lot of Friday, and by the time I arrived in Pensacola it was dusk already and I wasn’t able to do what I’d planned — shopping on Palofax followed by a sunset dinner on the pier. (I had a jack and a spare, but couldn’t risk the drive on a spare, and so had to find a tire shop.) But, life happens and we move on!
I began early the next morning by eating at a place recommended to me by my lady-friend, “The Coffee Cup Restaurant”. Founded in 1945, it serves a hearty breakfast that includes “Nassau grits”. (This includes onions and tomatoes.) I took in the weekly street market on Palofax after this, but it was so crowded I didn’t linger the way I did last time, instead deciding to head for Gulf Breeze Zoo. Gulf Breeze is an interesting community, located three miles across the Bay from Pensacola and composing a strip surrounded by ocean.
Despite this, there’s still land to waste on self-storage businesses. A lot of the architecture is adapted for life on the beachfront, so even the elementary school is elevated. As someone who lives hundreds of miles inland, every bit of this fascinated me.
I’d expected the zoo to be a bit like the Living Desert Zoo in Carlsbad, NM, oriented around the particular ecosystem of the gulf coast. This was not the case: it was a fairly normal zoo, if a bit more compact than most, and used multi-layer walkways to make the most use of its space: an elevated walkway takes visitors above plains and other habitats where we could gaze upon rhinos and the like from above. Gulf Breeze Zoo leans heavily into interaction, with multiple areas where visitors can feed animals or sign up for “Adventures” in which a zookeeper takes a few people into exhibits. I’m not sure if I saw everything, but for me a hit exhibit was the orangutan, who I got to see playing with her baby at length. I saw two animals here I haven’t seen at other zoos: camels, and red-handed tamarin. They have a gorilla, but unfortunately he was playing the shy boy and staying inside.
After this I drove to Pensacola Beach, but instead of venturing out near the boardwalk, I continued driving through Gulf Coast National Park until I was far, far away from the city. I found a quiet spot where I could sit and admire the wind and angry waves — a Red Flag warning was in effect — and just hung out for a while. I literally just sat in the sand, Buddha style, and reveled in the majesty of the white-crashing waves and the wind.
This far from any developments, there were few people: a fisherman who occasionally reeled in some critter from the large waves, and a couple with astonishing stamina making out while standing up. They were there for some 20 minutes at least. After an hour or so I spotted people arriving with folding chairs and a wedding arch: evidently some nuptials were planned, so I gave them their privacy and began making way back into town.
My plan was to find the honey and mead shop, and get a refill of the bottle I’d bought last time. They proved to be an easier place to find in traffic than on foot, and I wound up in the Irish pub I’d enjoyed some coffee at last month. After eating their house burger and fries over a pint of Guinness, a couple in their fifties approached me wanting to know if I was from Boston. I was wearing a Red Sox hat and shirt, so it wasn’t as random a question as it seemed. They’d lived in Bahston, among other places, and were intrigued at the Red Sox representation this far south. This turned into a lengthy (2 hours!) conversation in which I learned the guy was an ATF agent. Still, he treated me to a brew, so my libertarian scruples were becalmed. It was one of those random encounters that was full of different tangents — we were discussing crime dramas like The Sopranoes, Breaking Bad, and The Wire. (I can quote two obsessively: I’ve never watched the third.)
Having forgotten about the mead shop, I returned to my car and hotel for the evening, finishing Oppenheimer and beginning Dirty Harry. The next morning was Sunday, so I was going to make my second appearance at Christ Church: I needed some things from Walmart, though, and discovered an extent motor lodge en route.
As I learned in The Motel in America, these motor courts were the predecessors to ‘full’ motels, so I was surprised to see one in the flesh: this one is surrounded by fencing declaring it to be a construction zone. The local paper is completely paywalled, but I’ve found articles indicating that it’s going to be turned into “affordable housing”, either by converting the units themselves or by ….(sigh)….demolishing them to build something hideous. I saw plenty of empty lots on this stretch that could be used for construction without destroying a unique bit of history! The 8:00 service at Christ Church was good, though there was no choir in attendance: lining up to receive the Eucharist while being surrounded by choristers was a heavenly experience last time, so I missed it. Because tomorrow is Armistice Day / Veteran’s Day, Adult Formation was suspended for a Thanksgiving for Veterans service in which we were treated to a brief talk by a member of the church, who is the director of the National Naval Aviation Museum I enjoyed so thoroughly last time. I noticed that their Stations of the Cross paintings are all Orthodox-style icons, which I found interesting: I asked the rector about it and evidently icons have a history at this church. Fascinating!
After this, given the rain, I asked a parishioner what he’d suggest on a rainy day, and he directed me to Fort Pickens. The fort is one of two existing structures that used to guard the bay (the other is Fort Barrancas, and is inaccessible outside weekends in May – September). The original structure, I learned, was finished in 1834 and later augmented with ‘modern’ concrete elements.
I spent most of the late morning and early afternoon exploring the fort, and discovered that its Stony corridors made for fun acoustics. If anyone heard ghostly singing that involved ranting and roaring and being true English sailors, it was no spectre but me — testing different spaces to see how it sounded. (There is probably a reason I mostly vacation alone. Also, thank you David Warren for singing that in the Horatio Hornblower movies and thus introducing me to it.) I drove back to Pensacola in the rain, and but was able to find the mead shop and refill my bottle. Despite the rain, Palafox was busy, and after I refilled my mead growler (this time with apple pie mead) I found a Lebanese restaurant (The Levant) and had a sample platter. I have no idea what I ate beyond chicken, lamb, and stuffed grape leaves, but it was good.
I didn’t do much the rest of Sunday, having worn myself out at Fort Pickens. I’d bought a book on the Gulf there and was anxious to dive in, so I went to the hotel, took a nap, and then got to it. My plan for the next morning was to wake up at oh-dark-thirty, go back to the beach to see the ocean in the early AM and possibly witness a sunrise, then go back to downtown Pensacola before they closed off the bay front area for the Veterans Day parade. As it happened, I woke up at 5:00 to a steady downpour, sighed, and opted to sleep in, instead.
Although I went downtown to see the parade, it was a total bust: not only were roads closed in anticipation of the Big Planned Parade, but the continuing rain evidently led to a much smaller parade than expected, and it was over in 20 minutes. I learned this from pestering fellow pedestrians. After walking around in the rain for an hour I found refuge in “The Garden”, an enclosed open space with multiple food trucks and stalls in it.
This early in the morning, only a coffee place was open, but it gave me a spot to sit and enjoy my breakfast (a blueberry muffin + coffee) while waiting for the roads to re-open. I then went back across the bay, deciding to explore the boardwalk proper before leaving town.
Because of the continuing downpour, nobody but my crazy self was on the beach and boardwalk. I should note that I was wearing swimming trunks, a swimming top, a rainjacket, and a ball cap, so the rain didn’t bother me at all. Far from it! Being saturated by the elements — the rain, the wind, the ocean spray, the salt — was invigorating, and I happily explored the area, I found some lounge chairs right at the waterfront and sat a spell, then ventured forth for some lunch.
“Flounder’s Chowder House” was highly reccommended to me, so I went there. The two teen hostesses stared at my drippiness and I explained that this was the last day of a four-day visit to Pensacola, and since I was from 300 miles inland, I wanted to “soak it in — literally”. They were, or at least acted, appropriately amused.
After enjoying most of a shrimp salad and some frozen concoction, I reluctantly made my exit, driving back towards home and real life in a constant downpour.
Despite rain dominating the weekend, I think I made the most of it and thoroughly enjoyed it, and plan to return — perhaps in early March, avoiding Selma’s big tourist invasion. I’m increasingly interested in exploring the Gulf more broadly. I’d planned to visit Mobile this trip, but with the lost time from tires and rain that didn’t happen. Mobile deserves a weekend of its own, anyway!
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