Day 26, 22.6 miles, Dean campsite

Day 26, 22.6 miles, Dean campsite
It’s warm and humid in the morning. I start with just my summer dress on straight away. Everything feels sticky. 
The trail is much of the same and I feel sluggish. We see a dirt road alternate near the trail and decide to cut down on our misery and take the road instead. 
We end up walking through a poor neighborhood with yards with trash and mobile homes in poor shape. And the occasional barking dog of course. We wonder what it’s like to live there. 

A little bit further there is a private lake with some nicer residences and then it’s back to poor ones again. It takes an interesting turn when on one side of the road we see a mobile home with two tattered confederate flags on the porch and a bunch of junk laying around and a minute later on the other side we see a big beautiful new home with a three car garage and a porch with pillars in front. A long row of expensive houses with shiny cars parked in front follows. We are astounded by the juxtaposition. It’s fun looking at all the different pretty houses on one side and still some more mobile homes on the other. Eventually the whole neighborhood turns into fancy houses and when we pull off the road for a break we feel like out of place vagrants. 
We join the ‘trail’ again at the fancy houses where it’s a road walk to 87. We pass by the race track which is quiet now after we heard some noise from it last night. On the corner of 87 there is a Tom Thumb. It’s the local gas station convenience store. It’s lovely. There are healthy smoothie drinks, yoghurt, fruit, all kinds of things we haven’t found in the recent little stores. We loiter outside enjoying our snacks when the sun finally pokes through and fries us. 

Luckily there are still some large clouds giving us some relief on what is now a highway walk again. They are widening the road and it’s very interesting to look at the different aspects of building a second bridge. The bridge with all the materials and equipment, the actual new bridge, and the one we are walking on, it’s all there or in progress. We’re walking on a lane blocked from traffic so we can take it all in without worrying. 

We somehow fail to find the trailhead so we walk on until we find a little connector road to the trail. This way we pass by the sign-in kiosk, I hope we don’t get in trouble for that. 

This section of trail is just as beautiful as the other one in the Eglin airbase was. We love it. Miles are going by quickly and when we get to Weaver Creek we take a nice relaxing break in the shade. We wish all the trail on the Florida Trail were like this. 

Dean Creek is less than five miles ahead and we’re camping at Dean campsite near it. We arrive with plenty of day light left and relax some more while munching on whatever we have left in our food bags. We bought some goat cheese in Crestview and eventhough it got a little goopy it tastes delicious on our crackers. 
We do some planning for the next days and find restaurants in Navarre to look forward to. Only two more days left!