Fort Pickens
Gulf Island National Seashore
Santa Rosa Island
Pensacola Beach, Florida
Dec 14-Jan 10, 2012

Here we are back in Pensacola and the beach! Love it. We spent Christmas Eve here last year too. The camp host has a bonfire and every one brings potluck. Its interesting to meet the other campers. We met a couple from Ortonville here. Also a couple from St. Cloud who were doing mission work in the area. There neighbor was David Gamble and asked if we knew him. They came over to visit one Sun. Sure I know David Gamble and a lot of his family. Small world! His parents used to work for Geo. S.

We chose the second campground this year and found we liked it much better. There were about four to five campers in ths area so basically not crowded. I love to find some of natures beauty as there is so much. Took the camera and found these mushrooms on the campground. Aren't they amazing. Lenny found these egrets not far from our camp. He thought they were probably young ones. The pelican was a wooden carved one in front of a store. This was a Crested Grebe swimming along.

One of the natives here said all these tall dead trees were from the hurricane. He also told me how high the sand on the beach was banked high and the hurricane came and moved all of it back.

These top pictures are some things washed up on the beach. Lenny saw this eland days laster I saw one. The other is the huge jellyfish that were very numerous here. This little girl just whirled around the circle on her scooter being pulled by her dog. The Christmas Tree is bird food that some one put on the beach. The birds were not impresses as they are not down there. The two green tree frogs were in the shower room here. They would just sit on the stalls but believe me I kept my eyes on them. These little gecals were lined up on the curb sunning themselves. I don't think you would want to leave your shoes outside.

 Loved the beach. Would walk the beach several miles every day. This was a fishing boat in the area. The man above drives the boat. The beach ball is the water tower at Pensacola. There was a dredging crew off the shore cleaning out the channel.

The crews were still out going on the beach for tar balls. They got high tech now as they had their grasshopper on a trailer and porta pots on the back. We did not see as many tar balls on the beach but they know different.

 When you look at this sign you will notice cigar minnows. Well being from Minnesota I didn't know what it was, so I asked. What they are wiener.

These are all pictures of Fort Pickens. This place is always fascinating to walk around. These are some of the ammunition, encampments built in the dunes.

It wasn't that many years ago that this was a common site in Pensacola, of course they were US Navy.

Advanced Redoubt

This is on NAS Pensacola down the road from the Naval Museum.

Fort McRee - Pensacola's Lost Fort

To read more about this Fort here a link;
http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/fortmcree.html

This is the island were these photos were taken.

This was some photos taken at the beach across the bay. Lenny drove me way down the beach and then drove down to wait for me. This beach had a lot of cat paw shells and also the cutest butterfly shells in several colors. Some one told me that these shells were almost gone after the oil spill but are slowly coming back. They had built these nice walkways to the beach.

These are all sunset pictures at Pensacola. I like the ones through the grass. We would walk to beach about five for the sunset. Always beautiful! Lenny spends hours working these pictures so hope you enjoy!

©All photos are taken and copyrighted by Len Mozey.
If you want to use any photo please email me and ask.
Lennavy7@yahoo.com