30A Travel Guide - Part One
We returned from Florida’s Emerald Coast nearly a week ago and we’re already itching to go back. I’ve been traveling to Florida’s panhandle for 28 years and I loved it ever since my first visit. It’s truly one of my favorite spots and I’m so pleased that my husband and children love it too! There are so many vacation destinations along 30A (the scenic highway that hugs the Gulf of Mexico) perfect for families that I thought I would write a blog post and share some of my TAKE on this beautiful area of Florida.
30A is on the panhandle of Florida, positioned between Santa Rosa Beach and Inlet Beach or more broadly Destin and Panama City. It isn’t at all like the Florida you may have grown up with i.e. in my case high rise condominiums, Disney, palm trees, snow birds and shell filled beaches. 30A is full of white sugar sand beaches, sand dunes, cottages, evergreen trees and families. It’s a lot cooler than Southern Florida but I love weather that requires evening layers, yet is still swimsuit appropriate in the afternoons.
My parents discovered 30A after reading about Seaside, Florida in what I believe was Architecture Digest in the early 90’s. Seaside was designed by a group of architects with new urbanism at it’s core. It’s essentially, a small town with a town center full of shops, restaurants an ampitheater and a beloved market. There are brick paved streets full of pickett fences, sandy side streets and architecturally intriguing cottages with fun names like: Green Gables, Caribbean, Bonne Dunne, Savannah Rose etc… Each main street leads to a pavilion welcoming you to one of the loveliest beaches in the States. To be sure, Seaside is idyllic so much so that it was used as the backdrop for the movie, The Truman Show. It’s quaint and evokes a sense of community that I didn’t have growing up. I think the community aspect of Seaside is the key to it’s success and is probably why we fell in love with it. Growing up on a local highway in Wisconsin, we weren’t able to walk or bike into a town square, let alone cross the street by ourselves and the freedom to do that in Seaside paired with sunshine, beautiful beaches and a neighborhood pool was like heaven.
When we first came to 30A, Seaside was the only community on the coast. While the plans for the community were almost laid out in entirety Seaside was less than half of what it is today and still had it’s quintessential water tower. The site for Rosemary Beach was established a few years later and Watercolor and Alys Beach would soon follow and one could say, the rest is history. 30A has grown exponentially in recent years…there are more communities and with that more restaurants, shops, people and essentially options. Seaside, was the original and for that reason will probably always be my favorite but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t options out there that may be a better fit for your family or even mine! As a point of caution, be prepared for some sort of construction in almost every community along 30A. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I love to check out the new development whether homes, restaurants, shops etc… but it’s certainly something to be aware of when traveling to the area.
Stay tuned for my post next week “30A Travel Guide - Part Two”, where I’ll share my TAKE on where to stay, dine, shop along 30A, what to pack and the best ways to travel there based on my personal experiences over the past 28 years!
If you’re interested in reading more about the area here are some excellent references: