22 Years Ago

The Spousal Unit and I took the vows. While he had been to Florida his family were more Atlantic Coast people. He had never seen the Gulf of Mexico. I told him if he ever saw the Gulf he would never go back to the Atlantic Coast. We decided to honeymoon at good old Pensacola
Beach. What we didn't know was that Hurricane Elena had hit the area Labor Day weekend.

Remembering Hurricane Elena--20 Years Later--July 10, 2005

HURRICANE ELENA DAMAGE SURVEY: SEPTEMBER 2, 1985 by Timothy P. Marshall


We were getting married. Who had time to watch the news? Was The Weather Channel even around back then? We show up on Pensacola Beach and very few hotels are open and there are no people. We pull up at the Dunes Motel:


We asked if they had a room:



They said, "We sure do! But you can't stay on the water. That building had a little bit of damage due to the hurricane. But don't worry we're up and running, have power and water!"

Their pool suffered some minor damage but hey we came for the beach anyway!

This was where we stayed:

Nowadays they would never let anyone near the beach until that mess had been cleaned up but 22 yrs ago if hotels could reopen and make a few bucks they did. I think we stayed here for something like $30 a night, it might have been $50. We can't remember. There were one or two other couples there at the time and we pretty much had the beach and motel to ourselves. They ended up demolishing this motel and rebuilding it as a really nice ten story hotel but it once again suffered damage after Hurricanes Ivan and Dennis.

Another tale from the Hurricane Honeymoon, they were opening a Rax across the toll bridge in Gulf Breeze. The banner said "Grand Opening" plain as day. The parking lot was full, we went there for dinner. Turned out it was the employees' family night, we told them we were there on our honeymoon, saw all the cars and thought they were open. They fed us for free and told us to enjoy the party. The Rax is now a Burger King.

Hard to believe we have been married 22 years. They have been full of fun, adventure, and lots of love. One thing I know to be true, as much as I may complain about the Spousal Unit and the football thing--I really hate Fantasy Football, I love him so much and he's my best friend and I am so lucky that my ex-roommate dumped him for the soccer player.

Dude--I love you!