Finally on Florida soil

Continuing on our journey to Florida, we left Louisiana and spent 2 very cold days at the Hollywood Casino RV park in Bay St. Louis. I (Maren) tried my luck on the day's date, 12-12-12, at the slots and walked away $200 richer, so we enjoyed the huge buffet for dinner the night before we left -- "on me" :-) 

The rest of the money went to partially fill up Max with diesel fuel (I say "partially" because filling his tank completely would cost almost $400).  It is interesting to drive in to a new town... we can't help but inspect each gas station as we drive around.  While we'd love to take advantage of the better fuel prices than we'd find on the interstate, the vast majority of "in town" stations are a definite "no-go" of fitting Max+car in tow on their diesel pumps.  In Bay St. Louis, we didn't even see one we'd be comfortable driving Max alone in.

Ergo, it was with careful planning ("The Next Exit" is a great book for RVers) that we picked a truck fuel stop along I10 that we could fill up on our way to Pensacola.  Turned out to be a non-event.  Lots of pumps, lots of room... even got a burger from the Wendy's that shared its building.  Now if we can just get our "Pilot / Flying J" card working so we'll get a puny discount at the pump.

Arrived in Pensacola Thursday evening and was happy to be back in the "Land of Sonny's Real Pit BBQ", which we promptly ate dinner at with Jeffrey's brother and his wife, John and Susan.  While in Pensacola, they gave us a great tour of Pensacola's downtown area, we explored Ft Pickens state park, we stocked up on seafood for the freezer at Joe Patti's Seafood and, for a grand weekend finale, we went to the Naval Aviation Museum at the Naval Air Station to see the museum and enjoy a big commemoration of the 40th anniversary since the final Apollo mission.  As part of the agenda, we got to hear a presentation from the flight directors and 2 surviving astronauts of Apollo XIII (Jim Lovell & Fred Haise).  We also got to hear a bit about the Gemini and Mercury programs by a number of astronauts from that era.  Very cool! How nice that our timing in town coincided with this terrific event.