Driving adventures

(Disclaimer- I actually created this post a month ago… I’m just behind in getting it up and catching up on all our other adventures)

After spending several days in Mobile, AL, it was time to come back to Valdosta. We had family from Tampa coming up for New Year’s Eve, so we needed to get home. Mobile is only a 5.5 to 6 hour drive, but coming home we made it in just under 10.

In case you didn’t know, my wife is a beach addict. She loves the beach. More specifically, she loves the Gulf Coast. Since we were close by, we decided drive the coast from Mobile Bay all the way to Fort Walton beach and then back up to Georgia.

Unfortunately it was very rainy and overcast over most of Sara’s favorite spots including Fairhope and Gulf Shores. However, we were in luck a little further down the road. When Sara was still in High School, she went camping with a friend at Santa Rosa Island (just south of Pensecola, FL). She remembered it being a very secluded beach with a beautiful campground with civil war structures and battlements on the Island. Sara had heard that the Island took a massive hit by one of the Hurricanes in the past, but we decided to explore and see if it would be a place we’d want to come back to and spend some time.

When we got to the Island (we had to take two bridges) I was amazed. The Island actually runs east and west less than a mile off the coast of Florida. Although the island is 30-40 miles long, it’s only 300 yards or so wide. Just enough room for a road down the middle and some hotels on either side (but not over-commercialized like so much of the gulf coast). We get about 3 miles down the road and we enter some kind of national park. It was like being on a deserted island… so beautiful. You just don’t see this in Florida… unspoiled beaches. Unfortunately, just a few miles further we were turned away due to a closed road. Apparently the road has been closed for the better part of a decade when Hurricane Opal hit land at Santa Rosa Island. It was so disappointing as it is such a beautiful place. If you ever find yourself near Pensecola, I highly encourage you to visit this little piece of paradise. We assumed that this is where Sara had camped and where she explored civil war battlements.

We turned around, went back to mainland Florida and continued to drive east toward Fort Walton Beach. Only four hours later we were pulling into Valdosta. Was the 10 hour trip worth it? Absolutely! We saw all of Sara’s favorite spots, found a cool place to come back to, got some fun pictures of Titus at the beach (we stuck his foot in the water so he could say he’s been in the gulf… he wasn’t happy… at all!)