Starting out, Destin, & Alys Beach

Our 5 year wedding anniversary was last month but we are finally celebrating with a trip to Florida! The plan is to stay in Destin, FL for 2 nights, then Key West for 2 nights, then finish the trip in Key Largo for 4 nights before driving back home. For the first time since we've been married we rented a car for the drive. The Bronco has already made the drive to FL this year and we thought, let's get something special. James talked to his people and we got a black Ford Mustang convertible. It is so smooth and so quiet actually. We picked that up a day early and drove it around Lancaster for a day.

On Friday the 8th I worked most of the day and then came home and finished packing. We hung around home for a little while and had dinner before hitting the road so that we wouldn't get down to FL too early on Saturday without being able to check into the room. We got rolling around 7pm. Most of the drive was on route 81 since we were going to the panhandle which I was happy about.

James ended up driving until like 4am which was nice. I drove then until 8am and found a Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Always a good choice for breakfast in the south. There is one every exit and you always know what you are going to get. Some of these places off the main highway can be a little weird. Like the weird little gas station we found around midnight when we needed gas. The GPS said there was a Sheetz, there wasn't, and so we finally found a gas station that was open to fill up. Then went inside for the bathroom and the place was shutting down. Most things were 50% off and the woman behind the register was a little odd but super nice. She found some old quarter in the register and kept it to see if it was worth anything. I guess they are going to move her location to another gas station but it's a whole thing. She doesn't know where she'll end up I guess. They are open until June so there is some time.

Anyway, after Cracker Barrel, I kept driving for a bit and we hit some rain. We were off the highway pretty soon after this and onto numbered routes but they were more like back roads. James took back over when we had about 2 hours left to our destination.

Fun Fact: Destin is in a different time zone. There are 10 counties in the state on CST. I did not know this until we started the drive. This is important later.

We got to the area around 2pm local time. The room wasn't available so we drove around and found a beach to stand on. It had white sand and blue skies. The water is perfect here. We just missed a storm and I thought the water would be all brown from the weather but it wasn't, it was perfect. Windy but good. After visiting the Gulf which I haven't been to in years we drove around a little further to kill some time. We were on Okaloosa Island taking in the sites.

We checked into the hotel and immediately showered. It was a long night of driving. It was early but we wanted some dinner and to sleep so we left the hotel around 5 in search of food. I thought going early would be helpful...it was not. We tried an Irish pub but couldn't even find parking. I found another place down the strip called the Craft Bar that had plenty of parking and good reviews. I have to say, I am so glad the first place didn't work out. This restaurant was so good! I had a gin drink on special and James had rum which were both delicious. We ordered soft pretzels as an appetizer as we do and of all the places we've ordered pretzels, these were the best. They weren't hard on the outside and were true pretzel shape so they had the doughy connection bits. Really the whole thing was soft and doughy and didn't have too much salt. They also gave 2 so we didn't really have to share. I ended up with a fish taco and man, again, the best I've had and I get fish tacos a lot. Obviously, they were fresh and they had pickled onions and really good sauce. James had a burger and he also said that was good. They seemed to have a lot of beer on tap so I also got a tangerine wheat which was very refreshing. When we got back I passed out pretty quick and knew nothing of the world until 9am.

Sunday was the day to explore Alys Beach (pronounced Alice). Of course, I wanted to explore the town with the architecture and I was not disappointed. This is about 1 hour from Destin but still in CST I found out. We drove to Rosemary Beach which is right next to Alys which also has the same architecture with the white buildings. Parking is a nightmare so it would be best if you had a plan on where to park. It probably didn't help that it is Mother's Day but also this town is probably constantly mobbed. Anyway, no luck in Rosemary so we took route 30-A over to Alys 5 minutes away. After driving around this area for 15 minutes I wanted to park on a side road by a construction site where a bunch of other people had parked. James did not like that idea. We found another side street that had parking and James still wasn't totally on board but we parked and after walking around a little realized it was perfect. It was right off the main road, didn't require a parking pass and was set up with actual spaces.

Fun facts of Alys Beach town. This whole area was bought by a single family, the Stephens', from Birmingham Alabama as a vacation spot for the whole family. They waited a little while to develop the area and hired Andres Duany who is a cofounder of an architecture firm, DPZ. Duany had worked on other walkable towns such as Rosemary Beach. It wasn't until 2003 that the town planning got off the ground. DPZ also integrated Erik Vogt & Marienne Khoury-Vogt to plan the town. They started building the first houses in 2004 and due to several setbacks it took until 2012 to really see the town grow. The houses are made out of concrete which is good (and code compliant) due to the hurricane threat in this area. They must repaint the houses all the time or power wash them though because I can't image them staying this pristine white for too long with all the traffic.

Anyway, after finding parking we started to walk to the main drag which is along 30-A. Man it was crowded! I couldn't believe how many people and how much traffic there was. We started in a restaurant to get some breakfast and I'm so glad we did. It gave a minute to get our bearings and I was hungry, of course. It is a place called Fonville Press and you can sit at the bar, order at a counter to take to one of their outside tables, or pick up groceries/clothes in the store. We found 2 seats at the bar right away and ordered. James had a breakfast sandwich that came out on a cheddar biscuit that was like a little cloud of delicious and a rum drink he really liked. I had a turkey club that was also very well done and something called a refresher that was very refreshing.

After we ate we took to the street and walked back off the main road. I can't tell you how shocked I was at how quiet the area was the second you turn a corner. It was empty back there and you could hear birds chirping. A lot of the houses had fountains out front that added to the ambiance. James made a friend as he does. We saw a bunch of truss being set up and projectors so we found one of the crew guys and he asked what was going on. They were setting up for a digital graffiti show happening on Thursday through next weekend. They had these things everywhere and they were just leaving them out all week. It sounded like a pretty cool thing and with all the white concrete walls everywhere I bet it ends up being beautiful.

There was a lot of construction going on. I looked up some of the town and it seems like they are still developing the area. It is the last piece of land along 30-A to be developed and it's still going. We walked around the whole neighborhood and I really couldn't tell if they were private homes or rentals or commercial buildings. A lot of the buildings had signs with names but they could be names of the houses. The whole place was made with private courtyards for the homes so you never know if people were home or not. Anyway, it was super peaceful.

We found a sculpture.

After wondering around, we drove back down 30-A to take in the sights. It was slow going with all the traffic but there are some cute towns and strip malls along the way. There were even a few street fairs/markets set up.

When we got back to the hotel we thought we would go back out in Destin to check things out but ended up being super happy to sit on the balcony of our hotel room and look out over the harbor. We both read our books for a while before going to fill up our gas tank to prep for tomorrow's drive to Key West. All week I've been looking at the drive time between these two places because we have to get to the next hotel by 10pm and all week it's been saying about 12 hours. Well....the time difference really got me there. We are 1 hour ahead of the rest of Florida here so that ends up being 13 hours from when we leave til we get there and we don't have a lot of wiggle room on our departure time. We decided to get some food at Whataburger and bring it back to the hotel so we can chill, pack up, and get to bed early. We will get up at a ridiculous time to get going in the morning.