Panama City Beach
You can hear the waves crashing on the beach outside our hotel windows, and there are faint sounds of the seagulls flying about calling to each other.
As we awoke on Day 2 in Panama City Beach at around 9 a.m., we knew we were late for beach activity as we tuned into the sounds of children's laughter on the sand outside.
We quickly dressed so as to minimize our loss of Florida sunshine, and stopped at the Palapa Beach Club for another great breakfast. This time, I tried the freshly made pancakes with strawberries, and Donald had the biscuits and gravy. Though he found them delicious and a treat, he could actually feel the calories and the carbohydrates enlarging his belt size. We then headed off to explore a little of Panama City Beach, Florida.
Our first destination was St. Andrew's Recreational Area. For a $4.00 parking fee, visitors may explore this natural environment, which of course is more heavily used during the warmer months. St. Andrew's is a place to walk, jog, bike ride, camp, fish and swim, in a preserved setting. Don and I wanted to exercise a little breakfast off, so we walked a guided nature trail for about 20 minutes. The signage indicated there were many animal species in this Floridian Coastal marshland, but we were happy not to encounter any of its famous alligators.
We headed to the shoreline and just sat a while taking in the sights and sounds of the beach. Visitors were swimming, of course, but many more were strolling, scouting for shells and metal detecting. It was a calm and interesting place to people watch.
There are three main roads through Panama Beach City: Front Beach Road, Middle Beach Road and (of course) Back Beach Road, and they obviously give you their perspective in distance to the beach. We explored all of them.
We drove through the town and passed the standard souvenir shops, 99-cent stores, amusement park rides, fast food concessions, tattoo parlors, seasonal shops closed for the winter, and an abundance of condos and restaurants. We stopped into a few stores in order to help out the winter economy, and I actually bought something with a seashell motif