April 23, 2018
What a difference a day makes! Sunshine, favorable winds and warm but not too hot temperatures. Add to that a route along the coast, slow, lite traffic and lots of bicycle lanes and you have biker’s Nirvana. With thanks bestowed, we left Annette and Stacey’s for a multi-turn route designed to avoid as much of busy Highway 98 as possible. We still needed Highway 98 in order to cross a couple of inlets. At the big bridge before Destin, Annette’s friends from her home town bicycle club had gathered at the summit with signs and cheers to send her on her way.
Once off Highway 98 we traveled County Route 30A, a “scenic” route through some charming gulf-side communities and through what I have decided to call Beachopolis. Most of the smaller communities were residential with smaller residences and rental homes allowing plenty of public access to the gulf beaches. There were numerous open areas where the blue gulf waters glistened enticingly in the morning sunlight. Then there is Beachopolis. Beachopolis is what the entire coastline of the United States was destined to become before state and federal governments began to buy up any large areas still available. The primary features of Beachopolis are the tall, condominium type hotels and the chain type beach stores. You can hardly travel a mile without seeing at least two Sunsations or Alvin’s Island stores and it appears the hotel chains are trying to outdo each other to see who can pile the greatest number of rooms on top of each other. You might guess that this type of development is not to my taste.
However just to prove that it does not have to be this way, take the example of Sea Side, Florida on County Route 30A. This community exudes charm. No monster buildings, no cookie cutter T-shirt stores, no buildings over two stories except for some that serve a community or municipal purpose and those are well designed. It is a community that was designed to place importance on being able to work, live and relax in the same community without the necessity of driving 50 miles a day. It was so idyllically designed that it was chosen as the site for the filming of the Jim Carey film, The Truman Show. It was a pleasure to ride through it.
Our destination for this evening is St. Andrew’s State Park. It is a lovely park and one of the nicest we have seen on our trip. The sites are shady, large and well drained. It has a beautiful gulf side beach, a shallow wading lagoon as well as an abundance of wildlife. I took a dip in the warm gulf waters despite the high winds and heavy surf. It was refreshing.
