We're now further up the coast in St. Pete's Beach, FL. Sunny Florida has gone a bit cool on us with cloudy skies. We walked on the beautiful St. Pete's beach every day, sometimes twice a day, and generally relaxed, reading and watching tv. This is a summer vacation town and there's not much else to do here, especially in the off season.

After a couple days, we drove north to the Florida panhandle, staying for the weekend in Navarre, FL, just outside of Pensacola . If we thought St. Pete's Beach was quiet, Navarre was even more subdued! Luckily, it's Super Bowl weekend, so we found our own entertainment at the bar next door to the hotel. With the likely name of "Helen Back," we figured this was the place to have a good time--and we did! They had a giant big projection tv, so we placed ourselves right in front of it to watch the Super Bowl. Wasn't that a great game? We put our names on the bowl grid for prizes, and Marla's name was called for the final game prize! She won a very cool beach chair and a $25 dinner certificate. Luckily, we stayed in Navarre one more day so we used our gift certificate for lunch the next day.

It's time to start driving west, so we made our way to Baton Rouge, LA, where we spent a couple nights. Another rainy day meant we went to the Mall of Louisiana where Marla shopped and Cory went to see "American Sniper" at the IMAX theatre, followed by dinner and drinks at a local restaurant. The day went quickly, and we were on the road again towards Texas, just passing through Mississippi and Alabama so fast we barely had time to notice the state line signs .

This morning we're south of Houston in a hotel just three miles from NASA and the Houston Space Center. We're both excited to see the Space Center today. We've booked a Level Nine VIP tour of the Space Center to see the behind-the-scenes parts of NASA that the general public never sees. We're going to see the places where the astronauts train in zero gravity and a Saturn missile and Mission Control where they actually fly the International Space Station. Cory is very excited as he's always loved anything to do with space. We'll post a review of our tour and the pics later.

Tomorrow we're on our way to San Antonio, and we'll spend the weekend with our friends, Len and Fran. Then, Monday we're driving towards Phoenix with an overnight stop in Las Cruces, New Mexico. We'll be in Phoenix on Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 10. We'll have a day to do our laundry and repack in Phoenix before we leave Thursday morning with Marnie and Steve for Las Vegas to celebrate Steve's big 50th birthday party. Viva Las Vegas and Happy Birthday, Esteban!