On Pensacola Beach

LITTLE ROCK — For those who love a beach getaway within a day’s drive, here is my annual vacation travelogue devoted to you.

This year’s trip to Florida’s Emerald Coast along the panhandle took an earlier turn.

Instead of making the 12-hour drive to the white beaches of Destin or Fort Walton, the car headed to the sugary sands and translucent turquoise surf along Pensacola Beach.

And Pensacola on U.S. 98 was an hour closer to Northwest Arkansas. It’s a picturesque beach on one of the world’s longest barrier islands, and is part of the Gulf Island National Seashore.

I really didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at The Beach Club.

On the Internet, it looked like the ideal high-rise condominium complex right on the beach. But we all also realize that appearances (especially on the Internet) can be deceiving.

But this place proved to be even better than expected. All the rooms faced the ocean and even the onebedroom on the first floor had a view of dunes, white beach fences and the Gulf that could have been a painting.

While Destin and Fort Walton each have reputations for their beaches, the expanse of sand in this city perhaps best known for its “Top Gun” naval aviation school and the Blue Angels is equally striking for its own beauty.

In fact, it seemed to me that this stretch of blue ocean and white sand was not as crowded in mid-May as the other popular destinations.

Perhaps it was the fact that schools was still in session, which meant adults still ruled. That always makes it easier to get a table at a reasonable hour in a good restaurant.

And those who enjoy a beach as much as I do know that planning and anticipating the evening meal can be the biggest decision of any vacation.

In Pensacola, the choices are as good as I’ve found up and down the panhandle. Crabs has wondrous seafood offerings, especially their broiled crab feast for two (not on the menu) and their crispy fried shrimp.

Flounder’s Chowder House has as tasty a fried oyster as I’ve ever chomped on, and a large selection.

Others well worth trying are the Grand Marlin, Hemingway’s Island Grill and of course, McGuire’s Irish Pub, a festive steakhouse founded in 1977 (where I discovered a serving of Senate Bean Soup is 18 cents!). How can it be when it’s $3 in D.C.?

I’ve become a swimming-pool sort of guy as I enter life’s final season, so I especially enjoyed the large one where I stayed, and its adjoining hot tub.

It could be the most secure beachfront condo complex I’ve ever stayed in anywhere. I needed a code to get onto the grounds, through any door, into the parking garage and even through the fence gate leading to the beach walkway.

These folks take that kind of thing seriously.

Joyce Danser of ResortQuest told me Pensacola is a haven of mild temperatures and oceanside relaxation. That’s probably why Southern Living magazine has called it one of the top family-friendly destinations in America.

Compared with the nearby beaches at Destin and Fort Walton, I’d say the only real difference I could detect was that the Pensacola version seemed to me to be slightly narrower between the surf and the resort.

But whether that was just my imagination or not, it was still plenty big and not crowded.

After strolling the beach at twilight to one of the longest fishing piers in the Gulf at 1,471 feet, (and feeling that soft sand squishing between my toes) I stopped for dinner at Crabs on the beach.

There, a senior waiter named Christian told me the oil-spill cleanup is complete, although crews do still visit on occasion to resift and clean the beach.

There’s no outward sign that event ever occurred.

The beach at Pensacola teems with small shells, seabirds and a variety of little creatures that wriggle in the sand. Dolphins continually play only a couple hundred yards offshore.

I was particularly fond of the sandpipers that scurry endlessly around your feet as they search out their next morsel.

I’m also a sucker for the big-box beach shops that sell everything from T-Shirts to bags of shells. And the Portofino Boardwalk on the Santa Rosa Sound is well worth several leisurely hours in itself.

So my advice to fellow Arkansans in need of their annual Florida beach fix (especially for those in the baby boomer basket beside me) would be to consider Pensacola Beach along with the other destinations along the so-called Emerald Coast.

I’m just glad I did.

It’s an hour closer drive to our homes (each way). And, for me anyway, there was more than enough in that seaside community to satisfy every last yearning for feathery white beach, crashing waves and all forms of seafood from crabs, to grouper, to oysters and beyond.

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Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.