Mardi Gras at Panama City Beach and New Friends

Panama City Beach, FL

This blog is a compilation of several activities stretching back to last Saturday.

Being from Virginia originally, we never celebrated or did anything special for Mardi Gras.  After being in our current location for a bit we started seeing decorations going up around the campground for Mardi Gras, so Karen thought we'd better get with it and put up a few trinkets of our own.

Campsite lamp post

Our rig's mirror 

I'm sure some of you have heard of a Mardi Gras "King's Cake", but we never had prior to arriving here.  Karen decided to try her hand at making one. She found a recipe on allrecipes.com that utilized a bread machine for the kneading portion, and I must say, it was quite delicious!  We had to try a piece (or two!) to ensure that it was safe for human consumption before serving it to anyone else! ;-)  She did not have sprinkles in the traditional Mardi Gras colors (green, gold and purple) to place on top of the cake, so she made due with the sprinkles she had on hand.  It still looked festive!


Panama City Beach celebrates Mardi Gras at the Beach each year with many activities for both young and old and culminated this year with parades on both Friday and Saturday nights. There were also contests to select the "best" pirate and wench.

MC and selected pirate

The selected wench, and a not-so-approving
wench on the left

Although activities began earlier in the day on Saturday, we drove over about 4:00 PM to take in some of the live bands, street vendors, and watch the parade which began at 6:00 PM with fireworks following.

A few of the many floats in the parade

There was quite a turnout and a good time was had by everyone, especially younger folks like ourselves!

After a hard's night work of obtaining the beads

Even our cat got into the act!

Last night we engaged in an activity which is high up on our list of enjoyable things to do.  We met new friends Phil and Cathy (from all of the way across the road in front of our rig) and had a very enjoyable dinner prepared by Cathy and Phil at their motorhome.  They are in the process of getting their house ready for sale and moving into the Fulltiming lifestyle.  We had a great time swapping stories and meeting their two dogs Zoe and Darth Vader.


If we were a bit closer to New Orleans we'd like to take in the parades there. Hey, I almost forgot, we're Fulltimers.  We can go wherever we wish. Well, maybe next year!


Thanks for stopping by!