Hellobee

With fall just around the corner, I know it may be hard to picture a beach vacation. However, it’s never too early to start planning for one, right?! Just last month in late August, we decided to go on vacation to Seaside, Florida. After my friend from the Midwest started making it an annual trip to drive down to Seaside and I started hearing more about this beach town, I knew I wanted to visit someday with my family. I thought about the next few years and our growing family and decided it would probably be easiest to go now when I was nearly 7 months pregnant rather than in following years with an infant or toddler. Both of our girls are at a fun age where I don’t stress so much about naps and later bed times, so family trips have been much more enjoyable.

If you haven’t heard about Seaside, Florida, it is one of many small beach towns along 30-A, which is a road that runs along the Gulf of Mexico coastline in Northwest Florida’s South Walton county. Seaside and its neighboring beach communities are known for its sugary, white sand and pristine beaches and are also considered to be very family-friendly.

We live in the suburbs of Chicago and decided it would be best to road trip down to Florida. There are a couple of small airports near that part of Florida, but the flights were pricey and many of them had a layover. It was a 14.5 hour drive, so we split the drive into two days and made a stop midway in Nashville, Tennessee.

The girls did really well during the car ride. We started the drive early in the morning (we woke up them up and left around 5 am) and ate our breakfast in the car. We split our time listening to audiobooks, watching a movie and listening to music. We had a good amount of snacks ready too and made it to Nashville for a late lunch. We ate at Monell’s which is a Southern, family style restaurant that we had gone to in the past and really enjoyed. Afterwards, we hung out at the Nashville Public library. They have a really nice children’s area and our girls loved the down time we had there.

This is the front entrance of the beautiful Nashville Public Library.

Then, we let the girls run around at the Fannie Mae Dees Park. Afterwards, we walked around the area and had a small dinner (we were still full from lunch!) before settling in at the hotel for the night.

There was a beautiful, colorful dragon made with mosaic tiles that the girls liked climbing on at this park.

The next day, we started our drive again. The second leg was very similar to our first. As soon we got to our Airbnb that afternoon, we slipped into our bathing suits and walked over to the beach.

Our days at Seaside and its neighboring beach communities were fairly similar day to day with some time at the beach and some time at the pool.

We also visited a beach town, called Alys Beach. It has a beautiful backdrop but is more exclusive for those residing or staying there during their trip. Access to the beach is very limited there so we let the girls scooter around as we explored the area. While, it was “picture perfect,” there wasn’t much else to see or do in this area. I’m sure Alys Beach would be a great place to stay for an all girls (grownup) trip. People usually suggest renting bikes to explore the area.

A unique experience for our family was renting a pontoon boat. We drove farther down to a more well known vacation town called Destin. Mr. Pizza got a speedy lesson on how to drive a pontoon boat and then we left to explore for ourselves.  We headed to Crab Island, which is not really an island but a sandbar. There are inflatable obstacle courses and places to buy drinks on the water. People often anchor their boats there and snorkel around and sunbathe on their boats. The obstacle course was a little bit challenging for our 4 and 6-year-old and would definitely have been more fun for school-aged kids. We ended up having to cut our time short because heavy rain was heading in our direction and the water was getting a bit too choppy. Still, I loved our time on the boat and just cruising around on our own.

When vacationing along 30-A, there are plenty of rental homes. People often rent bikes and even golf carts to explore the towns. We ended up driving when we needed to go somewhere further than just across the street since we needed to carry a lot of things for our time at the beach. As for food, I had heard about a lot of amazing restaurants but honestly after a day of trying some of the restaurants that I had researched, Mr. Pizza and I were pretty disappointed. We ended up cooking and eating most of our meals at the condo we were staying at.

We planned this trip for the end of August because we had things scheduled for most of the summer. There were some pros and cons for going during this time. Because we went during the off season, it often felt like we had the beach to ourselves. And while there was rain in the forecast everyday, we still managed to get a good amount of beach and pool time each day. I really wanted to rent the pontoon boat so we managed to squeeze it in between a period of time when it was not going to rain, but we did have to schedule it last minute and cut our time short. I didn’t realize this was going to be an issue, but on some of the days that were were at the beach, there was a large amount of algae that continued to wash up on shore. The girls mostly enjoy playing around the shore and do not go too far into the water anyway, but it definitely made it less enjoyable. On the days that there was no algae, the beach really was picture perfect! During the week we were there, there weren’t as many family friendly activities scheduled. I know that when it is their peak season, they often have outdoor movies, a DJ playing and more. It would have been fun to experience these activities during our vacation.

I do hope to go again in the future. Many of the beach towns are a little different and unique so it would be fun to explore some other towns next time. If I go again, I can imagine going with a few friends and their families, renting a larger home together and cooking food and going to some of those family friendly activities together. I also hope that the next time we go, we can bike along to further explore the different towns.

Have you been to Seaside or any of other neighboring beach communities along 30-A? What are some of your favorite memories from going there?