Goodbye, Santa Rosa Beach.

In order to keep the appointment for a followup vet visit for Tammy Faye, we stayed a couple of extra days in Santa Rosa Beach.  That allowed us to attend another Friday night concert in the tack room of the stables beside our RV park.  This time there were three singer/musicians on stage, all of whom are songwriting veterans of the Nashville music scene.  The couple on the left would perform two or three numbers, then the guy on the right would do one.  The bearded fellow was an excellent guitarist and he and his wife had sweet country voices.  The good old boy on the right had one of those Marlboro whiskey bass voices but unfortunately was a better songwriter than singer.

Each song was preceded by a story of living and trying to make it in Nashville.  For example, the guy on the right told of being broken by his divorce some years back and going to a therapist, who told him on leaving the session to listen for support to a particular Rascal Flatts song - "I'm moving on".  He said, "Hey, I wrote that song!" and took it as a sign that maybe he was meant to be where he was.  That story might even be true.  Kind of a unique evening.

On the suggestions of some locals we did further exploration of the beaches along Highway 30A.  Among those beyond Seaside Beach were Rosemary Beach and Panama City Beach, both of which had wonderful European-style village architecture, and it was fun wandering those streets.

Incidentally, their real estate was even more expensive than Seaside's.  The sand beaches there were incredibly beautiful but somewhat restricted in public access.  One negative is that the traffic was kind of horrible, and you can imagine how much worse it will be in the summer.  For us the clear area winner in terms of where we'd prefer to live is Santa Rosa Beach, where our RV park is located, because it's somewhat off the beaten track and has a great feel to it, yet homes are considerably cheaper there.

But if you want truly cheap housing, you need to move further away from the gulf.  A nice couple originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana will be staying in this Santa Rosa Beach RV park for seven months while their home is being built in the Hammock Bay housing development, about 15 miles away.  We decided to drive over and check out their new home site.  The landscaping and open spaces in this 3000-acre development were awfully nice, and there was a commons area which included a clubhouse, restaurant, tennis courts, and multiple swimming pools.  Amazingly, the home prices there begin "in the hundreds".  We toured a couple of open houses, and one of them - probably listed at about $400,000 - a 3000 square foot four or five bedroom floor plan - was impressive, with a good open design and quality decorative touches.

Our next stop will be Tallahassee, the capital of Florida.  We plan to attend meetings of the legislature in hopes that there will be heated discussions dealing with the recent school-shooting tragedy.  We'll also keep our eyes open for demonstrators in the streets.  Perhaps a chance to observe history in the making.