Florida Bound 2012--Day 9

Had dinner rolls thrown at you lately?

Been a quite couple of days here in the Florida Panhandle. Drove over to Destin yesterday to shop at another of the Beall's Outlet stores. Picked up a couple more pairs of walking short and some more shirts. I'm not a person who enjoys shopping for clothes but these outlet stores do carry some things I like. I've hit their stores every time I get down south and most of the shirts in my closet came from there. (In some states they are called Burke's Outlet stores. Same company, same advertising and same promotions.) The drive to Destin from Navarre is really beautiful. There is one long stretch with no buildings that has large dunes on both sides of the roads of the great white sand that is down here. (I kept thinking about how much Joanne would have enjoyed that drive.) Later in the evening my cousins, Bob & Yvonne, and I picked up a couple of there friends and we drove into Pensacola for dinner at a sports grill, Sidelines. Their friend, Matt, and his wife are originally from the south side of Oklahoma City. Matt was an Oklahoma City Police officer and first responder the day of the Federal Building explosion. His mother was working in that building and perished that day. He wound up taking early retirement and moving down here and has not been back to Oklahoma City since. We had a good visit and learned we knew many of the same people.

This afternoon I picked up my cousins and we headed west over to Foley, Alabama, to eat at Lambert's Cafe for a late lunch/early dinner. This is the home of "the throwed rolls". Yes, they actually throw the dinner rolls to you. We first visited this place in January 2007 when we came down to Florida as a part of a seven coach caravan. We have eaten there several times since then when we find ourselves down this way. (There are two more Lambert's Cafes in Missouri.) The food is wonderful and plentiful. Each entre' comes with two sides but those really are not needed. They have what they call "pass arounds". The wait staff come around with pans full of fried okra, pan fried potatoes, black-eyed peas and several other items of southern cooking. All this and the best and biggest dinner rolls you could ever want. The guy who "serves" the rolls actually walks around and throws them to you. You just have to hold up your hand and he'll throw them across the room. It's really surprising how few are not caught and wind up on the floor. It was about a two hour drive over to Foley but most of it was along the beach and the Gulf of Mexico. After returning to Navarre and dropping of Bob & Yvonne I came back to the coach to relax and spend the evening with the dogs.