Obligatory Sunset Picture

This is off season and a Sunday. Panama City Beach is almost empty compared to what it is during Summer or Spring Break. Looking up the beach, there are more trash cans than people. And they still pay a guy to drive up the beach and empty the trash cans every day.  Well, that's what we wanted...a place just to chill out.

We are on the 3rd floor of a 16 floor high rise so we are almost on the beach. The surf is pretty loud which is cool. The weather is really nice. People are swimming in the gulf and hanging out on the beach. We have a nice balcony so we can just sit and enjoy it.

I'm not complaining but the combination of the bright sun reflecting off the water and white sand means that sunglasses are mandatory...and I left mine at home. One of our first stops today was to get sunglasses so I didn't have to squint all the time.

We ate lunch at Sharky's, a local tiki bar on the beach, They had football on the TV so we watched part of the Titans - Texans game. The food was good and the beer was cold.

I took a walk on the beach in the afternoon. There were a couple families out playing in the surf or in the sand. Some kid named Luke wrote his name in the sand in several places. I guess he wants to be noticed. There were several young guys out on paddle surf boards. They made it look effortless. I don't know how they kept standing up. They used long-handled canoe paddles (sort of) and managed the surf with no problems.

I walked about a mile up the beach and ran into only about a dozen people. The pelicans were busy diving for fish and the shore birds and gulls were busy working in the shallow water.

The sun sets here about 4:30 and by 5:15 it is pretty dark. I managed to get several pictures as the sun was going down and then my camera battery died. Probably a good thing...but I got the obligatory sunset picture.

We went to Shuckum's Oyster Bar for dinner. Lots of advertised places seem to be closed until next March.

We stopped off at the local Winn Dixie for a few groceries and then headed back to the condo and watched some TV.

This was a quiet day -- what we wanted -- and it was good not to spend hours in the car,