Florida, at Last!

It's an easy two-hundred mile drive from New Orleans along I-10 to Pensacola.  We took a few detours as we crossed Mississippi and Alabama to look at the Gulf but entered the Sunshine State early in the afternoon.  The Welcome Center greets visitors in multiple languages.


Update, 1/25/2012:
Linda, senior editor of this blog, noted that I didn't ever show the welcome center so that there was any context for the next two photos.  So, today, we went back to the welcome center, grabbed a photo, three brochures on Florida fishing, one on golf and a few others for good measure.  So here is the missing picture of the Welcome Center:



The decorations on the center let us know we were in a more tropical area,


but the palm tree was the sure sign of a warmer climate.


Pensacola is a navy aviation town and home of the Blue Angels.  I suddenly realized that I need a new tag for this blog, "Airplane on a Stick" since I have at least one more of these, from back home in Minnesota.


We arrived at our condo on the Pensacola beach in plenty of time to watch the sunset from the balcony.


Google says that it is 1300 miles from Bloomington to Pensacola and will take around 21 hours.  We took six days and covered 1858 miles.  Our timing was just about perfect.  The 64 degrees that we saw in Iowa has now been replaced by 10 degrees.  This morning's weather and news reports described traffic accidents on icy roads in Iowa, Missouri and Illinois.  We have only pleasant memories.