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We left our hotel (if you can call it that) and headed for Jean Lafitte Swamp Tours. Leaving plenty of time for the trip, we drove past Jean Lafitte about ten minutes before the tour was scheduled to begin. A lack of road signs and one totally incorrect road sign caused us to miss the actual location and tour, however. It took another half-hour to find the place and we only found it because we finally gave up and turned around to go back to New Orleans. We were not having a good time in New Orleans.
We took a final drive through downtown New Orleans and the French Quarter. Ann held the video camera out the window as we drove down Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street is the most famous, and perhaps most decadent, street in New Orleans. We left the French Quarter and drove for the Garden District but we didn't have a proper map and could not find anything remotely interesting. I think we probably drove around the district without ever entering it.
We left and headed towards Mobile. We intended to make a decision in Mobile about whether to go visit Atlanta, visit Mobile, or continue driving the Gulf route all the way to Interstate 95 in Jacksonville, Florida. The Visitors Center outside of Mobile failed to yield anything interesting in Alabama. When we reached the intersection of Interstate 10 and Interstate 65 that leads to Atlanta, I made a snap decision to stay south and stay warm. We looked at the map and decided we could make Tallahassee.
Signs placed at the Visitors Center in Florida warned that a football game in Tallahassee would make hotel reservations scarce. Having just gone through the same situation in New Orleans, we decided to look for a hotel somewhere along the Gulf coast, perhaps in the Pensacola area. We saw several motels advertised in Navarre Beach. We headed to Navarre hoping to find a nice motel with a view of the Gulf.
We arrived at Navarre Beach and had time to drive along the beach road as the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico. The Pensacola area is within the Central time zone so the sunset occurs early - somewhere before 5:00 p.m. Navarre Beach is on a thin strip of land that acts as a barrier island, even though the land is sometimes connected to the mainland. Every couple of years a storm comes through and either connects or disconnects the beach to the other side of the Sound. Since the sun set before we could get a motel room we went back across the Sound and found a nice new, inexpensive hotel with a view of the Sound.
The white sand beaches of Navarre are gorgeous and inviting. A few high-rise condos compete with individual homes and vacant lots along the beach. We learned from the locals that Hurricane Opal hit here in 1995, destroying much. A toll bridge spans the Sound and virtually all commercial establishments are on the mainland.
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