We just spent a week along the Emerald Coast of Florida relaxing, hanging with family and friends, and eating copious amounts of fresh seafood. My wife had never been to Florida and I had never been to the Panhandle area. My cousin and his wife retired about four years ago and moved down to Santa Rosa Beach. They moved about two blocks away from friends who had retired and moved to the area 10 years ago. We decided to head down to see everyone and hang for a few days.
First of all, we drove down. It was expensive to fly from Moline to Panama City. Coupled with renting a car for a week, it would have cost us over $1500 for transportation. My wife wasn't happy doing the 1000-mile drive one-way, but it wasn't as bad as she thought it would be considering we broke up the drive into two parts. We spent the night going down in Nashville and made it to Paducah, KY coming back. And we went at the right time - just before the Memorial Day holiday. Things began to get crowded along the beach on the Thursday before the Memorial Day weekend and by the time we left on Saturday, well, we were ready to get out of there and away from the crowds and traffic.
The Emerald Coast gets its name from the emerald green and blue waters that hug the white sand beaches along the coast. The beaches were - arguably - the finest beaches we'd ever encountered on our trips to seashores and lake sides around the country. There were little to no seashells to be found on the beaches, much to the consternation of my wife. We were told that the continental shelf drops off rather quickly - the deepest drop along the Gulf of Mexico - and that's one of the reason why there's not a lot of shells on the beach. Well, that, and probably too many people looking for them, as well.
And speaking of going to the Emerald Coast at the right time, we had gorgeous "Chamber of Commerce" weather the whole time we were there. Skies were clear (a little coastal haze in the morning quickly burned off) and temperatures were in the mid to upper 80's (30-32C). The winds were refreshing coming off the Gulf of Mexico and while it was humid, it wasn't overly oppressive. A couple three weeks before, the area was drenched in "500 Year" rainfall. The Destin area got over 14 inches of rain in a 24 hour time period, while Pensacola - about 60 miles to the west - got nearly 2 feet of rain over the same period. There were some washed out roads and watersheds that we encountered. The week after we left, they had more rain - 6 inches of rain over a 48-hour period. My cousin said, "When it rains here, it RAINS!"
Thanks to my cousin and his wife, they were able to show us around the area. The main road along the beach towns of Walton County is County Road 30A. 30A is more than a roadway, it's sort of the signature of the region - the slow pace and laid back way of life that locals and vacationers enjoy along the Emerald Coast. Driving along 30A is a deliberate process - vehicles usually don't get much above 25 mph and when the tourists show up in the summer months, the gridlock along 30A can be maddening. Especially for the locals who use the road to get to and from work.
The tourists from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Eastern Louisiana who funnel into the region give the area a somewhat disparaging nickname - the Redneck Riviera. Some people also refer to the area as L.A. - as in "Lower Alabama". While the region thrives on tourist money - and the locals love that - they also have to put up with some tourists who think they are "entitled", so to speak.
Getting to know some of the locals during our stay, it turned out that most of the disdain they have for tourists centers on those from Georgia - primarily the Atlanta area - many who come down and act like they own the place. We ran into a couple situations that documented this - one occurred on 30A on evening when a car was literally parked the wrong direction stopping eastbound traffic. The car was just stopped facing on-coming traffic while the people inside non-chalantly got out of the car. The car had Georgia license plates with Cobb County plates (Cobb County is the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta).
There was another instance where we had to go through a neighborhood to turn around due to 30A being washed out from the torrential rain storms a couple three weeks before. We went around the block and encountered a car parked in the middle of the street, next to another car along the curb. The guy standing beside the car in the street made the motion for us to "go back around" from where we came. The car had a Georgia license plate, this time with Fulton County plates (Atlanta proper).
Now, I'm certain that not all people from Georgia are like that. But it was interesting that we'd heard of instances of a supposed entitlement that some people from Georgia believe they have along the Emerald Coast and actually encountered a couple of them.
But probably the biggest bone of contention the people along the Emerald Coast have with the people of Georgia is over the diminishing oyster beds in Apilachicola Bay near Panama City. The oyster beds in that area have supplied 90 percent of the oysters consumed in Florida and 10 percent of the ones consumed by the nation.
Water usage by the citizens of Georgia - primarily from the Lake Lanier reservoir on the Chattahootchee River that feeds Atlanta's water supply - has cut into the water flow of the river which also feeds the Apalachicola River downstream. With the recent drought suffered throughout the Southeast, the State of Florida sued the State of Georgia directly in the U.S. Supreme Court last year to limit the amount of water usage by Georgia residents. The drought now appears to be over - especially with the rain they've had lately - but marine biologists have said it will take three years of normal water levels to bring back the oyster beds to their previous harvest levels. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has sort of just sat on the case.
In the meantime, most oysters consumed along the Emerald Coast come from Louisiana - including these meaty little mothers pictured at right. The Gulf Coast has come back strong after the devastating BP Oil spill in 2010. (My cousin's wife told us that every once in a while some tar balls will still wash up on the beaches.) We can attest that the shrimp and oysters we had were contaminant free.
We had considered staying over in Panama City for a couple nights, but after a drive over to the area with my cousin and his wife we're certainly glad we didn't. It seems to be more "touristy" than the Destin area and catered more to the younger crowd. Spring Break is a big deal in Panama City and I understand that city officials have begun to crack down on college students - especially underaged drinking and rowdy behavior - all along the Emerald Coast. In Walton County - the county in which Destin is located - the county jail is located over 30 miles north of the city near the Alabama border. When kids are arrested in Destin they have to go to the Walton County Jail and it's a haul for their friends to come and get them, fully interrupting a good portion of one or more days of Spring Break to get a friend out of jail.
The population of the Emerald Coast swells from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Traffic tie-ups and gridlocks along 30A are common during that time. The locals usually hang low waiting for the tourists to go away in September and then enjoy the wonderful fall weather with lower humidity and comfortable highs in the 70's. Temperatures in the winter time can get down into the 30's along the Emerald Coast and my cousin's wife told us that she lost a number of tropical plants this past winter due to sub-freezing temperatures that affected a good portion of the Eastern U.S.
We stayed at my cousin's house in Santa Rosa Beach for a couple nights before heading over to the Hilton Sandestin Beach to blow a bunch of my Hilton Honors points on a top-floor room in the main tower of the hotel. We enjoyed great views along the coast as well as spectacular sunsets with the sun appearing to set in the bay north of Destin. The Hilton Sandestin Beach has been around for 40 years with a good portion of the property getting upgraded within the past few months. We had access to three pools and ocean front beaches. Cindy and I did a number of walks up and down the beach during our stay. It was a great place to chill out for a few days.
And these tall buildings that you see are the only ones that are found in Walton County. County officials passed a law a number of years ago that limited development of high rise condos and hotels in the county. The buildings in the immediate area around the Hilton Sandestin Beach were grandfathered in before the law was passed . This is not the case over in Panama City where Bay County has no such restrictions on how high a building can be built. Because of that, the views along the coast in Walton County are nicer than over in Bay County. And probably less crowded, too.
And one thing that also didn't find much of was big box retailers. There was a Walmart near our hotel, but it seemed to be smaller than the vast majority of Walmart's around the nation. There was shopping - including the upscale Baytown Wharf shopping and entertainment complex located just across US 98 from the Sandestin resorts. But we didn't do much shopping - except for looking for a new pair of flip-flops for me. We looked in a lot of beach shops - there are tons of them to be found up and down the coast including a number of Alvin's Island stores that seemed to proliferate the area. We finally found a pair at an upscale shoe store in a strip mall very close to the hotel. They suddenly became my most favorite footwear.
Another interesting aspect about the Emerald Coast - we found that a drive to anywhere was about 20 minutes from anywhere. It's just so spread out along the coast that if we wanted to go to the grocery store, it was about a 20 minute drive. A particular restaurant? A 20 minute drive. Of course, it wasn't always like that, but we just learned that to get anywhere, most of the time it took 20 minutes. My cousin pretty much concurred with my findings after I told him that. He said, "Double that in the summertime. This place is overrun with people."
I also found that it was expensive to live along the Emerald Coast. Prices were high in grocery stores, restaurants and at the gas pump. There are a lot of retirees in the area, which sort of shocked me at the higher cost of living. Tourism - of course - is the No. 1 industry along the Emerald Coast and unemployment runs from about 3.8 percent to 6.5 percent in the five counties from Pensacola to Panama City. We encountered a number of Eastern European service people in restaurants and the hotel - mainly younger kids.
With all the tourists in the area, we saw only three cars from Iowa - all of them from Eastern Iowa around where we live. We passed a car with our home county of Scott along Highway 98 one day. We saw a Muscatine County (just to the south and west of Scott County) license plate the first day we were there. And we passed a car with Johnson County license plates (Iowa City) one day. And the guy was picking his nose. Figures...
We ate a lot of seafood and I probably got sick because of it. There's nothing worse than having the flu while you're on vacation. We lounged around the pool looking out over the emerald green and blue Gulf Coast waters. We had our annual vacation encounter with AAA due to a dead battery in my wife's car. And we had a valet literally cut a smelly fart in our car just before he delivered the car to us after dinner one night. I would have withheld the five buck tip I gave him had I smelled it before we got into the car. All in all, it was a nice vacation and in the coming weeks you'll be reading about some of the places we ate at up and down the Emerald Coast while we were there. Stay tuned!
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