So here I am, spending a couple of nights at Days Inn, which was still a construction site last summer when I visited here and bunked at the oceanside Clarion Resort Buccaneer next door. If you like being in the thick of things, you can't do much better than this. Once school is out, the beach teems with families. It goes out for about a mile. I think it's wonderful to walk out on the sandbar and look back at the beach.
People look like little ants.
The beach is definitely the drawing card, but there's plenty to keep a family busy for a weeklong vacation. The unspoiled barrier island with moss-draped oaks, palms and grassy expanses is the antithesis of the overdeveloped beach resorts that dot the Atlantic coast and the Florida Panhandle. Only 35 percent of the land is developed, and under law, no more is allowed to be. Only 600 or so homes have been built on the island, and most are smallish and distinctly '60s ranch. OK, it wasn't exactly Sea World, but we got several tantalizing glimpses of Flipper and Co. surfacing in the waters off the south end of the island.