We Used to Carry Everything

Last fall, The Baby announced that she could not possibly go away the summer before senior year.

Apparently there were jobs and friends and senior things and an entire social ecosystem that could collapse if she disappeared for seven days.

Then we spent February break touring colleges. Suddenly, a summer vacation did not seem quite so unreasonable.

She did, however, have requests.

She wanted to bring a friend. She wanted to go to Europe. And she wanted to stay in a small coastal town where she and her friend could wander on their own, walk to the beach, shop, eat, and generally have a vacation that didn't require spending every waking moment with her parents. Fair.

Europe, with only a few months' notice, was a little ambitious even for me.

But then I found Rosemary Beach. A tiny walkable town on Florida's 30A. White sand. Clear Gulf water. Restaurants and shops. Bikes everywhere. Community pools. And, most importantly, enough freedom for two seventeen-year-old girls to have an adventure of their own.

Then I found a two-bedroom, two-bath condo right in town and steps from the beach.

Done.

Rosemary Beach, Immediately

Our travel day was wonderfully uneventful.

And when we stepped outside?

Hot. Gloriously, aggressively hot.

We were dressed for airplanes and airports, which turned out to be approximately twelve layers too many for August in Florida. We stopped for groceries on the way and eventually arrived sweaty but happy at our condo.

The location was perfect.

And Rosemary Beach was just lovely. Brick sidewalks disappeared beneath trees. Bikes leaned against porches and storefronts. Little pedestrian paths wound between houses. Restaurants and shops gathered around the center of town, but just beyond them were quiet residential streets that made the whole place feel much more like a little village than a beach resort.

The girls and I immediately went wandering.

Then we walked to the beach.

I have spent plenty of time in Florida, but I don't remember ever seeing Florida water quite like this. It was clear, pale turquoise, and bathtub warm. And the sand was so fine and white it reminded me of the kinetic sand The Baby used to play with when she was little.

There was probably some symbolism available there. I ignored it.

We were hungry. Dinner was at Cowgirl Kitchen, which was perfectly adequate for four tired travelers but did not exactly inspire poetry. Nobody complained. Nobody raved. It fed us. Sometimes that is enough.

Back at the condo, we introduced The BFF to one of our longest-standing vacation traditions: games and a movie.

Apparently, if you travel with the Garlocks, your evenings will eventually involve cards, snacks, and somebody becoming irrationally invested in winning something that has absolutely no consequences. 

The girls quickly added their own contribution to the tradition: as soon as the games ended, they would sneak downstairs to The Sugar Shak for ice cream to eat during the movie. 

Welcome to the family vacation, The BFF.

By the next morning, everyone was already beginning to settle into their own version of it.

Apparently, They No Longer Need Us

The Hubs and I were up early the next morning to walk the trails at Camp Helen State Park along Lake Powell.

The trail was easy, shaded in places, and exactly what we wanted before the heat settled in for the day.

We walked and talked.

Wildlife. Travel. The future. The places we still want to see and the things we imagine doing when our lives have fewer school calendars built into them.

Nothing monumental. Just one of those conversations that happens more easily when you're walking side by side somewhere new.

On the way back, we stopped at The Donut Hole and brought an assortment home for the girls.

They emerged, ate donuts, and promptly disappeared again on their bikes.

Oh. Okay then.

The Hubs and I wandered around town and eventually headed to the beach.

Rosemary Beach's chair setup may be one of my favorite vacation purchases ever. We walked down to the sand and our chairs and umbrella were just...there.

No carrying. No setting up. No collapsing wagon filled with towels, toys, coolers, boogie boards, sunscreen, snacks, and enough equipment to sustain a small beachfront colony.

Sitting there, The Hubs and I started reminiscing about our annual Outer Banks trips when the kids were little.

Getting our family onto the beach back then required roughly the same logistical planning as an amphibious military landing.

There were so many children. So much stuff. So much sand in places sand should never be.

Now we walked onto the beach carrying almost nothing.

The water had gotten a little rougher overnight, cooler and more churned up, with sea grass and jellyfish riding the waves. Still, the beach is my happy place. Give me a book, warm air, and regular dips in the water and I can happily disappear for hours.

Eventually, the girls reappeared and we met for an easy lunch built around a collection of dips and snacks we'd picked up at CK Feed & Supply.

Then apparently everyone had relaxed enough because we drove to Panama City Beach to rent jet skis.

Once again, proof that my children did not inherit my fears.

The girls were thrilled to be old enough to drive their own. The waves were a little rough, which they considered an enhancement rather than a warning. The Baby even had a dolphin swim alongside her. She was ecstatic.

I was happy for her from my preferred position of not personally needing to prove anything to the Gulf of America.

We stopped at Ghost Crab Pizza for dinner and ordered, among other things, the Crab Rangoon and Bee Sting pizzas.

Both were excellent.

Back at the condo: games, movie, bed.

Adventure together, wander apart, meet back over food and games. A rhythm was already forming.

Warm Water and Children With No Fear

The next morning The Hubs and I headed right back to the beach after a quick breakfast at the condo.

Read.

Swim.

Read.

Swim.

Bliss.

The girls headed for one of Rosemary's community pools and eventually picked me up for an easy Playa Bowls lunch before we all headed out together for a Snorkel & Dolphin Sightseeing Tour aboard the Footloose.

Almost immediately, a dolphin breached.

Then again. And again.Three times. SO cool.

There are plenty of things I have seen in my life that should probably make me less impressed by a dolphin. I remain wildly impressed by dolphins.

The boat continued toward Shell Island with rum punch in hand, which is generally how I prefer my marine-life education.

The water around the island was wonderfully warm and calm. We wandered through the shallows looking for shells and sea life, finding sand dollars, shells, and even an urchin.

It was simple and ridiculously fun.

Afterward, we did a quick change and went straight to The Grand Marlin for dinner.

This meal was a hit.

One of the great joys of having adventurous eaters is being able to order half the ocean and pass plates around the table. Fresh seafood is one of my favorite parts of traveling near the coast, and the brown-butter-and-caper pompano was calling my name. It did not disappoint.

By then, we had stopped trying to plan who would do what together. Everyone seemed to naturally find their own way through the days.

Separate Vacations, Same Trip

The Hubs and I were up early again the next morning for a hike at Deer Lake State Park.

Finding the trailhead was the first adventure. For future reference, it is across 30A from the parking area.

The second adventure was discovering that the trail itself was not terribly well maintained and came with frequent reminders that snakes and alligators also enjoy Florida.

The repeated wildlife warnings, combined with a trail that seemed increasingly theoretical, eventually convinced us that perhaps this particular morning hike did not need to build character.

We turned around. 

Still, I loved our morning hikes. There was something about beginning each day together before everyone scattered in different directions that felt right.

Afterward, The Hubs and I returned to the beach while the girls headed off again to explore and swim.

After lunch, I moved to one of the community pools for some quiet reading time and The Hubs eventually joined me.

That evening, the girls stayed behind while The Hubs and I had date night.

We started with drinks and ceviche at Pescado Seafood Grill & Rooftop Bar, where the rooftop views alone are worth the stop.

Then we walked to Gallion's for dinner.

Bread with a butter candle. Ahi tuna tacos. Red snapper. Drinks. Key lime pie to go.

Very, very good.

We went back to the condo, where games and movies were already underway.

We added key lime pie.

By this point, key lime pie had replaced the girls’ nightly Sugar Shak run as our movie dessert. Apparently vacation traditions can evolve quickly. 

The BFF was still desperately trying to win a game. At this point it had become a personal quest.

Alys Beach: Beautiful, but...

The following morning The Hubs and I rode our bikes to nearby Alys Beach for breakfast at Fonville Press.

Alys Beach is striking. White stucco. Clean lines. Beautiful landscaping. Everything perfectly placed.

Maybe a little too perfectly placed for us.

It was gorgeous. Immaculate. Not a blade of grass appeared to have made an independent decision in years.

We enjoyed exploring, and breakfast was good, but we both came away feeling that Alys was just slightly too sterile for us.

Beautiful?

Absolutely.

But Rosemary had already gotten under our skin.

We did return to Alys that evening for dinner at O-Ku.

And that? Amazing.

I am fairly certain we ordered one of everything on the menu.

Sushi. Seafood. Small plates. Things we ordered because they sounded interesting. Things we ordered because someone saw them go by another table.

Our waiter apparently agreed that we had accomplished something noteworthy because he eventually rewarded us with a free dessert.

Again, I found myself grateful for kids who want to eat.

Travel is considerably more fun when nobody believes chicken fingers are a personality trait.

My Favorite Kind of Vacation Dinner

By Day Six, it was time for the 30A Farmers' Market.

I adore farmers markets. Not necessarily because I need another activity on vacation, but because markets give me a little glimpse into how a place eats.

And, given the opportunity, I will happily build dinner around whatever looks good that morning.

We had preordered crab cakes, knowingly violating my own preference for eating local seafood because the reviews were just too good to ignore.

Rules are important. So are excellent crab cakes.

We added grass-fed Wagyu strip steaks, onions, a loaf of sourdough, and long beans after being thoroughly outmatched by an extremely talented young salesman who apparently understood his customer immediately.

Obviously, a mini key lime pie came home too.

This is my idea of vacation dinner.

I only wished the market had fallen at the beginning of the trip so we could have stocked the condo from it for the week.

The girls had another request: shopping in Seaside. So off we went.

They loved the little collection of shops and food stands, and unlike most of the week, The Baby was perfectly happy to have us tag along.

Although I suspect our wallets may have had something to do with that.

Then we went home and cooked. Simple food made from things we'd gathered that morning.

It was one of my favorite meals of the trip.

No reservation. No dress code. No rush.

Just good ingredients, a table full of people, and the satisfaction of eating the place we were visiting.

Six days in, there was nothing left we felt like we needed to accomplish.

One More Day at the Beach

Our final day was deliberately quiet.

Beach.

Pool.

Reading.

One more afternoon of doing very little particularly noteworthy.

Exactly right.

That evening we had cocktails before heading to Shades for dinner.

After several nights of beautiful restaurants and carefully composed seafood, there was something deeply satisfying about a local bar that has been around for nearly thirty years, makes everything from scratch, and appears completely uninterested in reinventing itself.

Thirty years in a Florida beach town tells you something.

Shades is casual and lively, the kind of place where the menu is big, the bar is busy, and nobody seems particularly concerned with whether dinner photographs well.

Fresh local seafood once again won the night, and I ordered a blackened redfish sandwich.

Then we went back to the condo for one final round of games.

And then, on Night Seven, the impossible happened.

The BFF won.

There was great rejoicing.

Lighter

I had been a little nervous about this trip.

Traveling with two teenage girls could have gone several ways.

Instead, it worked beautifully.

They did their thing. We did ours.

Sometimes we met for lunch. We did a few activities together. We ate most dinners together. At night, we played games and watched movies.

Nobody needed to spend the entire day as a unit for the trip to feel like a family vacation.

In fact, maybe that was why it worked so well.

There was a time when vacation required us to carry everything.

Literally.

Chairs. Umbrellas. Beach toys. Snacks. Towels. Changes of clothes. Sunscreen. Boogie boards. Children.

But we carried other things too.

Schedules. Entertainment. Decisions. Constant awareness of who needed what and when they would need it next.

This week, the girls ate donuts and rode away on bikes.

The Hubs and I went hiking. They went to the pool.

We went to the beach. They shopped.

We had date night.

And then, almost every evening, everyone found their way back to the same condo and the same table and the same increasingly competitive game.

We were together.

Just differently.

Somewhere between those old Outer Banks beach days and this one, we stopped carrying quite so much.

The kids grew. Our roles shifted.

The beach chairs were already waiting for us.

And for seven hot, salty days in Rosemary Beach, everything felt just a little bit lighter.

Even the photo album. Apparently documenting your travels is now cringe.

I hope this inspires you to travel, to eat, and to join me as I continue sharing my journey through seven continents and infinite foods.

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If You Go – Quick Itinerary

Stay: Right in Rosemary Beach if you can. Having a condo steps from the beach, pools, restaurants, shops, and bike paths gave the girls freedom to come and go while letting us largely forget the car existed.

Eat and drink: The Donut Hole for an assorted box of breakfast treats; CK Feed & Supply for dips, snacks, and easy condo provisions; Ghost Crab Pizza for pizzas; The Grand Marlin for fresh Gulf seafood; The Sugar Shak for the girls’ post-game, pre-movie ice cream runs; Pescado for rooftop cocktails, ceviche, and the view; Gallion’s for the butter candle, ahi tacos, snapper, and key lime pie; Fonville Press for breakfast in Alys Beach; O-Ku for the meal where we seemingly ordered one of everything; and Shades for casual, scratch-made food from a local bar that has been doing its thing for nearly thirty years.

Shop and cook: The 30A Farmers' Market for the makings of an easy vacation dinner. Our steaks, crab cakes, long beans, sourdough, and key lime pie ended up being one of my favorite meals of the week. I only wish market day had fallen earlier in our trip.

Explore: Camp Helen State Park and Lake Powell for an easy morning walk; Rosemary Beach by bike; Alys Beach for architecture, breakfast, and dinner; Seaside for shopping and food stands; Panama City Beach for jet skis; and the Snorkel & Dolphin Sightseeing Tour aboard the Footloose for dolphins, rum punch, and warm-water exploring at Shell Island.

Worth paying for: The Rosemary Beach chair-and-umbrella setup. After years of dragging children, chairs, toys, towels, coolers, and half our earthly possessions onto the beach, walking down to everything already waiting felt downright luxurious.

Maybe skip: Our Deer Lake State Park hike. The trailhead was tricky to find, the trail was poorly maintained when we visited, and the repeated snake and alligator warnings did not exactly inspire us to persevere.

Our trip rhythm: Morning adventure, beach, wander separately, reconnect over food, games, repeat.