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East of Pensacola, a bridge crosses the intracoastal waterway to Pensacola Beach. Go to Pensacola Beach and turn right. Pretty soon you are out of the town and in a very pretty area that is extremely sparsely inhabited. Or at least this was true before Katrina, and before a couple of hurricanes severely damaged the peninsula. I don't know what it looks like since 2003, but back then you drove along for a while until you got to the national seashore. You checked in at the small office and kept on going.

There are no turns to right or left. Here and there is a small parking area on the ocean side of the highway and you can stop and go to the beach. These places are, or were, very little used, so you have the beach almost to yourself. Farther along you get to the campground, which is on the bay side of the highway. If you camp there, and I do not recommend you do this in July, you can take a short stroll over the dunes on to the bay side of the peninsula. The narrow beach there, or rather the shallow water just off the beach, is full of hermit crabs living in bright red Florida Fighting Conch shells. you'll scarcely find a shell that is unoccupied, so don't take any of them home, but they are kind of cool.

The dunes at the top of the beach are eroding. They're Pleistocene, which means they are at least 10,000 years old. If you walk along the base of the dunes you'll find shells that rolled out of the dunes and tumbled down to the beach. The shells have lost their color, but they're freshly exposed, so you are one of the first to see them. These shells were alive in the Gulf of Mexico, probably before any people lived here. Certainly before recorded history.