Casino Beach in Gulf Breeze, Pensacola

This is another blog post I’d intended to post looooong ago. My “things I want to blog about” list is very very very backed up. (Speaking of backed up, my toiled is clogged and instead of calling maintenance, I went out and bought a plunger, and unplugged my very first toilet. It was rank and awful and filled with delightful things that only a woman who has experienced the two weeks post pregnancy could fathom. Now I feel powerful and commanding, and the plunger is my mighty scepter. But I digress.)

These photos were taken about a week before I gave birth. My doctor had just released me from the majority of my bed rest restrictions, so we decided to hit Casino Beach at Gulf Breeze, the beach that everyone raves about as the iconic white sand / blue water beach of Pensacola. The plan was that Jonathan and his mum would go swimming and I would sit in one of the overpriced chair / umbrella rentals and play with my phone and camera and people watch and get bitter over all the bikini bodies.

Speaking of, this was my FIRST TIME baring my preggo belly in public. I was slightly extremely uncomfortable doing so. Now before everyone jumps on me for being anti-woman or some drivel like that, let me clarify – I think the pregnant form is beautiful, mysterious and nigh sacred. Everyone else’s but mine, that is. In addition to chunking me up all over, pregnancy caused my belly button to veer off at a crooked angle, and gave me lovely purple stretch marks streaking up my sides like some retarded finger painting tiger mauled me.

So anyway, off we trotted to the beach. It had been storming off and on for the past month, so the water was, shall we say, less than blue. In fact, it was so churned up with seaweed and algae that it looked slightly like we were stepping into the Mississippi River. I am NOT fond of seaweed while swimming in the ocean (that’s kind of why I tend to avoid the ocean… that, and things LIVE in there) so I ventured out to my waist (the water is so warm!), looked around at the sludge trying to worm its way into my swimming trunks, then said, “Yup, done now.”

The sand, however, WAS sparkling white. Tropical, beautiful, and the texture of sugar. It felt like getting a foot massage just walking over it.

After my adventure into the sea, I snuggled down into the beach chairs just as a storm rolled overhead. I mean, one half of the sky was bright blue, the other was dark black / grey. The weather here in Pensacola is kind of bipolar like that. Jonathan and his mom raced out to jump into the water, splashed maybe a couple of steps in, and then the whistle was blown to clear the beach. Which was slightly lame.

So that was our first beachy adventure in Pensacola! Hopefully the next one will look a bit more like the postcard imagery that Pensacola plasters on their tourism websites, with clear blue water and perfect weather. And next time, we’ll have little Tessa to join us!!