St. George Island, just off the Florida coast but a world away

On a crescent-shaped, paper-white beach along Florida’s Gulf Coast, the sun catches slivers of sand in billions of tiny sparkles, so that the dusty beach looks as if it were frosted with sugar. The water is warm, the breeze is fresh and the atmosphere is bucolic, simple and barefoot. This is St. George Island, and it is not simply a beach getaway but also a sanctuary of peace and tranquility for the mind and soul.

St. George Island, 28 miles long and just one mile wide, is one of Florida’s dynamic barrier islands that buffer and protect the mainland and its coastal communities and fragile salt marsh and seagrass bed ecosystems from the weather. extreme of tropical storms and hurricanes. . The Panhandle community also considers itself part of Florida’s so-called “Forgotten Coast,” those small, pristine and relatively unknown islands and towns, like their Mexico Beach cousins, Cape San Blas and Carrabelle, that don’t welcome the party crowds of Playas. from Miami, Daytona and Clearwater.

The island’s crowning glory is St. George State Park, a nearly 2,000-acre park that was named the number one beach in the U.S. on Dr.’s annual 2023-24 Top 10 Beaches list. Beach. Dr. Beach is actually Dr. Stephen P. Leatherman, a coastal expert and professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University in Miami.

“This long barrier island, far from urban areas, is a favorite destination for beachgoers, fishermen and bird watchers, as nature abounds,” Dr. Beach wrote in selecting St. George. “In addition to swimming in crystal clear waters, I enjoy walking on the beach and shelling.”

The primary beach designation runs from Memorial Day to Memorial Day each year, when Dr. Beach chooses a new one. He has selected the top 10 beaches since 1991, using at least 50 criteria to evaluate beaches, including water and sand quality, safety, and management.

You can walk nine glorious (yes, count them), nine miles of undeveloped beach in the park. The sugar-soft sand blown by the wind also creates huge dunes, where some people refer to them as the Alps, Florida-style.

“Northerners also call them snowdrifts,” says Sheila Hauser of the bright white dunes.

Hauser works at Collins Vacation Rentals, the rental management company where our small group rented our beach house.

Park Manager Joshua Hodson says the state park is among Florida’s great flyways and is “very popular” for bird watching, with abundant feathered locals and migratory birds, including terns, plovers, ospreys , eagles, white egrets, tanagers, buntings and great blue herons. . At least 300 species have been observed on the island, an astonishing number for such a small destination.

Hodson also notes that with its remote location and no condos reaching into the sky and emitting artificial light, the sunsets are spectacular and the nights are dark and full of stars and galaxies. On a clear night, look for Orion and Canis Major, which are easy to spot, even the smallest ones, including the Pleiades Seven Sisters Star Cluster. In spring, the Milky Way casts its mysterious glow across the universe. Don’t worry about streetlights blurring your view, as there are none on the island to help ensure hatchlings of the captivating phenomenon of the sea turtle nesting season, between May and October, have a chance to survive.

The water of St. George Island is unusually clean and pure, sometimes emerald green or as silver as mercury, depending on the season and the mood of the gulf and its winds. To the north of the island is Apalachicola Bay, where both bay and gulf are an aquatic cornucopia for the freshest seafood, including the plumpest shrimp, fattest grouper, saltiest oysters, and deepest snapper. red.

Only about a thousand residents call St. George Island their year-round home. Most vacationers rent houses, none of which are more than three stories high. It should be noted that the tallest structure on the entire island is the historic and picturesque lighthouse on St. George Island, with its 92 steps that reach the top and another eight in a staircase of steps. Amy Hodson, executive director of the lighthouse and Joshua’s wife, says it is one of the few lighthouses in the country with wooden stairs.

“Every year about 25,000 people climb the stairs to the top,” he says. “Some come for the full moon climbs, but they are so popular that they sell out in just a few hours.”

Stay on the island

Through Collins Vacation Rentals, owned by Alice Collins, our group was able to choose from one- to seven-bedroom homes. While there are other rental agencies on the island, a family member who frequently vacations on St. George Island recommended Collins, who has worked in rental and real estate management for half a century. More than 100 of the nearly 300 homes Collins manages have pools, but that wasn’t at the top of our list with the Gulf of Mexico at our back door.

In the end, we chose Papaw’s Sandbox, a beautiful beachside house filled with a beachy variety of blue, turquoise, and white. The huge gourmet kitchen was a plus for our group because we didn’t want to go out to eat every morning and night, as was the long porch complete with Adirondack chairs and a view of the water. With its private pool and convenient elevator, it was ideal for our group of friends for a spring getaway.

For those who prefer to get closer to nature, there are about 60 campsites available at the state park with additional amenities including a playground, showers and bathrooms, and electrical hookups. Several kilometers of nature and bike trails wind through pine forests, dunes, and coastal scrub habitats.

While the island is remote, for all needs there is a Piggly Wiggly, locally called the Blue Pig due to its blue exterior, and Captain’s Corner Store and Deli with sandwiches and snacks.

Eat and drink on the island.

A sampling of food and drinks includes the Beach Pit, serving seafood (try the blackened flounder and fish sauce) and homemade Texas-style barbecue. Did you get the clever name? Seafood plus barbecue equals the beach and a steakhouse. Another happy place is Mango Mike’s, which serves oysters of all kinds, from raw to steamed and smoked, or in unusual dishes like the Bootleg, where the bivalve is made with moonshine, parmesan, bacon and chives.

Continue also with the cozy Blue Parrot. For appetizers, we ordered fried blue crab claws and peeled and eaten shrimp and devoured them until there was none left. For my main course, I wisely chose gulf shrimp stuffed with jumbo crab meat that tasted simply luxurious.

Paddy’s Raw Bar, which is packed in the summer, is another casual spot to try local Apalachicola oysters, with the local favorite being a dish called Kitchen Sink with red and green bell peppers, jalapenos, bacon, onion and topped with Parmesan cheese. The fish tacos are made with the day’s catch and the gumbo is made with local shrimp and crab. Plus, cool off at Aunt Ebby’s Ice Cream, where you’ll be rewarded with huge portions of hand-dipped ice cream.

Not in the mood to cook? Chef Ian Williams, owner of Your Table! Your cook! He will come to you, even in your kitchen, to provide you with an elegant dining experience where everything, down to the bread, is made from scratch. He will prepare a culinary delight from preparation to presentation, from four-course meals to the Low Country Boil, a spicy Southern creation of seafood, usually shrimp, andouille sausage, potatoes and corn on the cob.

playing on the island

The big draw is the water and the state park, but opt for a sunset or dolphin cruise with St. George Island Charters with bright and cheerful Captain Krista Miller. Explore the island by bike or golf cart with Island Adventures, while watching the cats, perhaps crossing the street at the “cat crossing” sign. The Gulf Coast is known for afternoon showers, but there’s a cure for that too with an art class at Art of Glass, where mixed media projects, like sea turtles or beach scenes, are created that also serve as souvenirs for take home.

If you’re ready to get away from it all to St. George Island, take the incredibly scenic drive from the mainland over the 4-mile-long Bryant Patton Bridge. The island is a short drive from Florida’s capital Tallahassee and tourist-packed Panama City, but in every way it is a world away with its peaceful, slow-moving existence.

Think of it as a kind of Gilligan’s Island, Florida-style, but instead of thatched shacks and shipwrecks on an unexplored desert island, it’s more like a watercolor painting with pastel-hued houses and beaches fabulous enough to be voted number one in the country. .