Day 49 Panama City, FL

 

Now as much as I don't particularly like country music, one really should listen to "Knee Deep" by Zac Brown Band while reading this blog post, to capture the feeling of Panama City.

 

Since we weren't able to make it down to Miami, we wanted to have at least one good beach day on our trip to feel like real honeymooners. So we planned to stop at a beach along the Gulf of Mexico, since we had heard that the water was nice and clear there, but we were also on a time crunch to get to New Orleans to meet up with someone. We left Jacksonville at 11 PM and were only going to drive for a couple of hours and then drive the rest of the way to Panama City the next morning to get at least a couple of hours of beach time. But Alex once again proved that he's the best husband in the world: I finally went to bed around 1 AM because I couldn't stay awake any longer, and while I was dreaming away, Alex drove the whole way to Panama City and got there at 4:30 AM, so that we could have the whole day at the beach. And as if that weren't enough, he got up in the morning while I was still sleeping and drove us to a Waffle House, because I kept talking about all these stories I've heard about Waffle House and how it's too bad we don't have them in the Northwest. It was very sweet of him and started our day off really well. We also had our total not-from-the-south moment when the waitress asked if we wanted grits or hash browns and Alex asked her what grits were. She just stared at us like we were aliens. Their pecan waffles were delicious though!

 

The rest of the day was spent at the beautiful beach of Panama City. With it's clear water and white, sandy beaches, it reminded me a lot of Hawaii and it was a much needed, almost tropical, stop.

The water was really warm too and we spent a lot of time swimming and snorkeling. Alex tried for hours to catch a fish, but failed. At one point though he noticed a big fish in the water and pointed it out to me. And as we were standing there we saw a fin come up, and sure enough, there was a 5 foot longish shark swimming 15 feet away from us. We freaked out and ran to the shore as fast as we could, where a nice couple from Georgia was walking by.

We asked them if the sharks are dangerous there and they said they see them all the time because the sharks follow the sting rays toward shore, but that they are very rarely dangerous. Right after that we noticed the sting rays swimming by us and were a little more cautious about swimming too deep. We also ate out on the beach, which we haven't really done too much of on this trip. So even though we didn't go to Hawaii or the Bahamas, we got to feel like typical honeymooners for at least a day.