“The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness.”
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

When we found out our Wisconsin friends were heading to the Florida Panhandle for Thanksgiving week, we decided to join them. It was a *slight* detour from our original itinerary (which was to head down diagonally from Wisconsin to AZ), but spending more time with them on those awesome beaches was worth it! White sugar beaches and turquoise water? Hell yeah!

This area of Florida is one of its best kept secrets. The beaches are wild and empty, it's not too hot or too damp for us Northerners and the state parks campgrounds are more affordable. What's not to like about it! We liked Big Lagoon SP, but we would have prefered a campsite closer to the open sea, like Fort Pickens SP (where you need to reserve quite a while in advance). We also loved St. Joseph Peninsula SP, but there is no cell signal there. The big downside is that dogs are not allowed on the beaches pretty much everywhere. We either had to drive 45 min to Pensacola Dog Beach (a really nice beach) or drive 15 min to a dog park on the lagoon side of Perdido Key.

If you go to this area and do not need Internet signal and want to tent camp, go camp to Cayo Costa State Park, it's on an island only accessible by boat (when the address is 4 Nautical Miles West of Pine Island, you know it's gonna be quiet!).