Thank You Veterans

We were in bed surprisingly early considering our reunion celebration with "Time & Tide".  It was so much fun catching up, but we plan on doing so much more.  Just not today.  We got up early for one of our longest days of travel so far.  By 6:20 we had the anchor up, but we were not the first ones to exit Ingram Bayou.  One sailboat was missing that was here when we anchored yesterday, but there were so many additional boats that arrived after we did.  I believe there were no less than 11 of us there last night, which is a record on our account.
It was almost a boring day.  I have to say that I love the rivers and "ditches", where you are close the shores or embankments and can see whatever there is to offer without constantly looking through the binoculars.  Today was a day full of mostly semi large bays that offer no more than an occasional dolphin, which is fun.
We traveled for almost ten hours before tying to the free dock at Fort Walton Beach.  How apropos to be here so close to Eglin Air Force Base for Veteran's Day.  Thank you to all here, present and past, and those everywhere to give us the freedom to do what we love.
"Rickshaw" was already here, along with "Lumiere", who pulled in just before we did after overtaking us this afternoon.  It is a young couple aboard "Lumiere" doing The Great Loop with preschool children, planning to be home in time for them to start school next year.  How great is that?!
Creatures of habit, we walked strait to Fokker's Sports Bar, as is tradition for us, to enjoy some chicken wings.  Had we not had our blinders on on the way there, we might have noticed that the new restaurant just before it was a tap house.  We did notice that fact once we left Fokker's, so of course had to stop for one more.  It is now on our list to try again at some point in our three nights here.  Our original plan was for two nights, but this cold front coming in is going to make our next bay, one of the largest and nastiest, Choctawhatchee, rough on Wednesday so we will hold off until Thursday to try it in a moderate chop, which I'm sure we have done before.  This is a plus though for visiting with "Time & Tide" some more.  They lagged behind a little today, stopping somewhere they did not on their first loop, but will catch up with us tomorrow.