Did you know that the #1 beach in all of America is in Pensacola, Florida? We didn’t, but once we found out, we were determined to go see why. So we mapped it out, it was only an hour outside of one of our real estate markets where we have a 42 unit apartment building. So we went and toured the property and got to spend a great evening with our other team members there. But we knew we needed to get our RV security, Blue dog, some time to exercise as he had been cooped up for too long. So we kept telling him that we would take him to this great beach and he could run and it would be great. Boy were we wrong!
We had another team meeting to get to so we knew we could only spend a few hours enjoying the beach, but the weather wasn’t that great so we knew it would be enough. We found a Walmart to park the RV in, loaded up the gear and dog, and headed to the #1 beach. We are very conscientious pet owners so we recognize our cranky old dog, doesn’t like to be around a bunch of other dogs, people are fine, but dogs stress him out. So we were driving around and trying to locate a place that was further away and less pets. Even though the weather wasn’t that great the beach was really crowded. Then we realized why, it was spring break at the #1 beach destination.
We finally find a spot that seemingly looks as good as it is going to get. We didn’t see any other dogs and headed out. We finally got to the entrance and were reading the rules and warnings, since the weather was a slight concern. WHAT!!!! It was absolutely unbelievable, out of all the beaches we have been to, this was the first one that did not allow dogs. Well that is really weird we thought so we just figured it might be that particular beach and we went driving to find another one, needless to say after driving for an hour only to find that all the beaches within 30 minutes of Pensacola, none of them allow pets of any kind. So we tried to let Blue down as best we could, found a small park area where he could run around for a few minutes and enjoy a good walk and then took him back to the RV.
We headed back to the beach and out to the pier, something else we found out that we had never seen, they charged us each just to walk on their piers. Thankfully it was only a $1 each, but if we wanted to fish it was considerably more. We had never heard of such a thing.
We saw a bunch of fishermen out there and since we love to fish we wanted to go chat with all the fishermen and see what their catching. So we paid the toll and headed down the pier. It was packed with fishermen and they were jumping from both sides of the piers. It was great fun! Apparently there was a school of Spanish Mackerel in the area and they were hitting like crazy. As we stopped to observe a young 15 year old fishermen, who was there on vacation, he was excitedly reeling something in. We waited with great anticipation to see what he pulled in and boy was it worth it. He brought in the weirdest looking fish we had ever seen. It was called a Remora.
It had this weird looking rectangle spot on the top of it’s head with ridges and the fisherman being in true typical boy fashion said “I wonder what that is” and proceeded to stick his hand on it. Well what it was a suction cup that the fish uses to attach themselves to the bottoms of sharks and whales. They eat anything that drops out of the sharks or whales mouth as well as the parasites that live on the shark or whale. They also enjoy the free transportation the shark or whale provides. So we finally headed down to just sit on the beautiful beach and boy was it beautiful! I could see why it is the #1 beach. Unfortunately for us, by the time we finally got there, we only got to stay like 15 minutes. The wind started kicking up and the rain started in, so we figured it must be time to get to our meeting and sure enough it was. So we came we saw, we didn’t conquer, but we will leave that adventure to another day.
We will be back Pensacola, don’t worry! On to the oldest city in the whole USA!
