Santa Rosa Island

One of my favorite spots in all of America is Santa Rosa Island, aka Pensacola Beach aka The Redneck Riviera. This small barrier island off the coast of Pensacola FL has some of the whitest sand in the world. The sugary white stuff is only sixteen feet above sea level, and when the bad hurricanes hit, the Gulf waters wash over the island into the Santa Rosa Sound on the north side. Hurricanes have periodically been delaying or altering wonderfully affordable vacations for ordinary middle class Americans for many decades. The consistency of the hurricane damage has always kept the development from exploding: SRI has maintained a small permanent population of a couple of thousand. Mix a large quantity of oil into a hurricane and you get a little more than temporarily delayed vacations, though.

My wife and I made a vacation trip to Santa Rosa Island back in 2000. She had never been there before. Like many native Texans, she was familiar with that state's own coastal areas, but the only time she had been to Florida was when we flew to Miami to catch a cruise ship for our honeymoon. Growing up in Mississippi, my family members were some of the rednecks who enjoyed the hot beaches and recreational pursuits of the island. I am so glad that my Texas wife got to experience the area while it was still pristine. In fact, we stayed in a lovely little Clarion Suites village with its own quiet beach area and romantic, two-story suites. Hurricane Ivan destroyed that quaint little resort in 2004. When I first visited the island in the very early '60's, there was only one high-rise hotel there. Little one-story motels lined both sides of the highway, particularly on The Sound side, where it was cheaper and quieter. Over the past years, I suppose building technology has developed to a point at which expensive high-rise hotels can withstand the force of the surging waves. When we were there in 2000, the place we stayed was one of the few quiet, small hotels. The high-rises lined the beach, with the prerequisite crowds on the white beach area within each hotel's parameters.

After renting jet skis in The Santa Rosa Sound, Miss Pamela took a high-flying parasail ride over the same area. The seafood was cheap and plentiful and so was the shopping and sightseeing. Just as in the '60's, The Redneck Riviera was alive, well, and affordable. After a few days on the island, we cruised eastward in our new Mustang Convertible, pausing briefly to visit the planned village community of Seaside, where The Truman Show had been filmed a few years earlier. We were going to Panama City, where we had made some special reservations weeks ahead of time. Shell Island is another small barrier island off the Florida coast, but its distinction is not beach tourism. The water near Shell Island is home to the largest colony of Bottlenose Dolphins in the world. Flipper was a Bottlenose, so you know the species. Rented boats and special tours of all sorts leave Panama City daily with tourists wanting to see and swim with the dolphins. You can have a close encounter with Flipper from a jet ski to a large cruise boat full of tourists. We researched the situation on the net far ahead of time and booked a reservation on a boat that took out only six people or less. The experienced tour guides took us to just the right spot to spend a lot of time in the water with the dolphins.

Seeing the news reports on TV about the relentless oil spill in The Gulf is one thing, but the loss of The Redneck Riviera is quite another. Of course the millions of environmentally aware Americans realize that the loss of the Louisiana wetlands and its horrific effect on wildlife will damage us all in the future in ways we cannot now imagine, but the loss of a favorite tourist playground is in your face in a manner even the uninformed rednecks will not be able to ignore.