12-04-09 Panama City, FL

[Rick] I used the Thesaurus to look up a word describing today and all I can find is “Lousy”. The weather was cold, damp, dark. The only thing missing was the rain. We were going to take some pictures but they would not have come out well.

We left Ft Walton Beach and motored 70 miles to Panama City and the Bay Point Marina. Betsy took a picture of a statue of a pelican in the Ft Walton Beach Municipal Park. We think we saw the model for the statue.

Before we left, we chatted more with the New Zealanders and got to tour their boat. It is actually 32 feet long with a steel hull. Pearl, the boat, has a 90hp truck engine. As I reported yesterday, they have only an ice cooler and a 2 burner stove. The family sleeps on 4 mattresses spread on the floor. Then, the next morning, they pile the mattresses under a bench and use the space for home schooling of the two teenage children. The father, John, is a retired teacher. The wife, Phillippa, is a teacher. In New Zealand, a teacher teaches 5 years and then gets a year off. So, this year, they bought the boat and are doing the loop. Obviously, they are very adventurous folks and love to travel, having already motored most of the European waterways.

ps. As an exercise in discovery, just where do you go to find another word for Thesaurus?