This wasn’t truly a dive trip; it was a family beach trip where I sneaked in a little diving. We previously lived on the FL Panhandle and I regularly dived the area. My wife really wanted a beach trip and with Caribbean travel a bit tougher at the moment we headed back to familiar grounds.
For those unfamiliar with the FL Panhandle the beaches are great, the sand is the whitest and softest I’ve experienced, it squeaks when you walk in it. The water along Destin is green vs blue and the difference between a good day and a bad day regarding water clarity can be significant, but overall the area fit the bill; laid back, salt ocean air, easy flights and good food.
Accommodations
My wife was entirely in charge of selecting the accommodations. We stayed at the San Remo Condos on 30A, which were pretty nice and good location for the family. If you’re considering a family beach trip to this area, make sure to look into the 30A area (east of Destin) as opposed to just Destin proper. It’s less congested, has fewer high rise style condos and has tons of great restaurants. My wife wanted a 3 bedroom so the baby and toddler wouldn’t keep each other up, which narrowed the options a bit. The condos have a full kitchen and washer and dryer, which is handy with young kids. The condo also has a heated pool (they turn the heat off in May though) which was great considering in April the water is still a bit chilly in Northern FL. It’s a short boardwalk to a private beach area with provided chairs and umbrellas which was never crowded while we were there. There’s also a turtle pond that provided a lot of entertainment for our 4 year old. We had a ground floor unit which doesn’t have as good a view but with young kids that still seems like the way to go for the inevitable back-and-forth trips. There are some restaurants and shops in walking distance of the San Remo which was nice as well so every meal out didn’t require loading up kids in car seats. Overall, the accommodations worked well and we’d stay there for future trips.
Food
We moved from the FL Panhandle area to VA 3 years ago and have missed the food. First stop after leaving the airport was fried chicken and chicken tenders from Publix, along with some other grocery essentials. It was just as good as we remembered. We've not had much luck finding good fried chicken in Va. Burrito Del Sol (Destin and FWB) was a required stop and lived up to our memories as well. There are a lot of Seafood selections, Boshamps was a go to while we lived there and it too lived up our fond memories. Shunk Gulley was a new spot and while expensive, was very good, since we could walk to it we ate there a couple times. We also grabbed lunch at Chanticleer, the food was great, but they were slow which we didn’t remember previously, of course young kids (baby) in the picture probably changes expectations. Obviously with kids we were eating at casual spots, but there are a few more formal options on 30A as well that are very good, Vue on 30A being one of them.
Entertainment and Activities
The majority of the entertainment was a rotation of the beach and pool. The heated pool was nice but the beach was the favorite. The conditions were great the first 2 days but there was some wind later in the week which impacted the water clarity (mentioned previously), all-in-all beach time was very good. In between the beach and pool, the turtle pond was fun and walking the Okaloosa Pier was quite an experience for our nature loving 4 year old. Seeing Heron and Pelican up close was cool, as well as large fish schools and dolphin. We didn’t spot any loggerhead or green turtles though, which are somewhat common when walking the pier.
The Diving
I went diving with what was my favorite outfit as a local, ScubaTech. I’ve used many of the local operations when I lived there and none were ever bad but I always preferred ScubaTech.
Why is ScubaTech my favorite? First, I like the Captain/Owner Nancy Birchett. Her dive briefings are some of the more informative and detailed ones I’ve received. Also, she’s been doing it so long she always has interesting stories during the surface intervals. The boat is good and fast and has an interesting layout (since it’s a converted lobster boat) which provides a large dry cabin area and pretty good room on deck when gearing up too. The crew has always been very good and they’re very responsive during the booking process.
We did Labor Day Rock and Mac’s Reef. Despite having dived the area for a few years previously I’d never done either of these sites. Labor Day Rock is a large rock with lots of overhangs, cracks and crevices and is filled with marine life and was a good, typical dive for the area, max depth around 90’ with a pretty much square profile. The visibility was about 20-25ft which is average for the area and the water was quite chilly. They’d been reporting 67-68 degrees but my dive computer read 64. However, my computer always seems to read a few degrees cooler than others, so 67 might be possible. I was hoping it would be 70 and usually is by this time but it’s taking a little longer to warm up this year. I packed my only wetsuit, a 3mm farmer john which has always been sufficient at 70 and up and it was ok on dive one but I pretty much shivered throughout dive 2 despite doing a decent job warming up during the surface interval.
Some of sites on the dive were lots of bait schools, snapper, grouper, toadfish, batfish, blue and gray angelfish, an octopus and some smaller critters too (nudi etc). The highlights, on ascent a visit by what appeared to be a sandbar shark at around 65’ and then at about 45’ the distinct clicks and squeaks of dolphin! I’d foolishly “stowed” my camera already (low vis) but when the pod appeared I quickly got it back out. We were treated to about a minute or so of the pod swimming about us checking us out, it was a first for me and was a pretty awesome way to end the dive.
The second dive, Mac’s Reef was an artificial reef made of large concrete culverts and debris. It’s closer to shore so a bit shallower, at around 75’. It wasn’t as filled with life as the natural reef and the vis was a bit less but was still an interesting dive. Because I was already shivering immediately on descent it was a short dive with a few batfish being the most interesting encounters.
Since this wasn’t a dive trip I only brought some of my camera gear (single strobe and no WAL) and this was the first time using an AO Cooler to haul and keep my camera in on the boat and it worked as well as others have advertised.
And of course a few photos:
Rest of the album:
Destin 2021
For those unfamiliar with the FL Panhandle the beaches are great, the sand is the whitest and softest I’ve experienced, it squeaks when you walk in it. The water along Destin is green vs blue and the difference between a good day and a bad day regarding water clarity can be significant, but overall the area fit the bill; laid back, salt ocean air, easy flights and good food.
Accommodations
My wife was entirely in charge of selecting the accommodations. We stayed at the San Remo Condos on 30A, which were pretty nice and good location for the family. If you’re considering a family beach trip to this area, make sure to look into the 30A area (east of Destin) as opposed to just Destin proper. It’s less congested, has fewer high rise style condos and has tons of great restaurants. My wife wanted a 3 bedroom so the baby and toddler wouldn’t keep each other up, which narrowed the options a bit. The condos have a full kitchen and washer and dryer, which is handy with young kids. The condo also has a heated pool (they turn the heat off in May though) which was great considering in April the water is still a bit chilly in Northern FL. It’s a short boardwalk to a private beach area with provided chairs and umbrellas which was never crowded while we were there. There’s also a turtle pond that provided a lot of entertainment for our 4 year old. We had a ground floor unit which doesn’t have as good a view but with young kids that still seems like the way to go for the inevitable back-and-forth trips. There are some restaurants and shops in walking distance of the San Remo which was nice as well so every meal out didn’t require loading up kids in car seats. Overall, the accommodations worked well and we’d stay there for future trips.
Food
We moved from the FL Panhandle area to VA 3 years ago and have missed the food. First stop after leaving the airport was fried chicken and chicken tenders from Publix, along with some other grocery essentials. It was just as good as we remembered. We've not had much luck finding good fried chicken in Va. Burrito Del Sol (Destin and FWB) was a required stop and lived up to our memories as well. There are a lot of Seafood selections, Boshamps was a go to while we lived there and it too lived up our fond memories. Shunk Gulley was a new spot and while expensive, was very good, since we could walk to it we ate there a couple times. We also grabbed lunch at Chanticleer, the food was great, but they were slow which we didn’t remember previously, of course young kids (baby) in the picture probably changes expectations. Obviously with kids we were eating at casual spots, but there are a few more formal options on 30A as well that are very good, Vue on 30A being one of them.
Entertainment and Activities
The majority of the entertainment was a rotation of the beach and pool. The heated pool was nice but the beach was the favorite. The conditions were great the first 2 days but there was some wind later in the week which impacted the water clarity (mentioned previously), all-in-all beach time was very good. In between the beach and pool, the turtle pond was fun and walking the Okaloosa Pier was quite an experience for our nature loving 4 year old. Seeing Heron and Pelican up close was cool, as well as large fish schools and dolphin. We didn’t spot any loggerhead or green turtles though, which are somewhat common when walking the pier.
The Diving
I went diving with what was my favorite outfit as a local, ScubaTech. I’ve used many of the local operations when I lived there and none were ever bad but I always preferred ScubaTech.
Why is ScubaTech my favorite? First, I like the Captain/Owner Nancy Birchett. Her dive briefings are some of the more informative and detailed ones I’ve received. Also, she’s been doing it so long she always has interesting stories during the surface intervals. The boat is good and fast and has an interesting layout (since it’s a converted lobster boat) which provides a large dry cabin area and pretty good room on deck when gearing up too. The crew has always been very good and they’re very responsive during the booking process.
We did Labor Day Rock and Mac’s Reef. Despite having dived the area for a few years previously I’d never done either of these sites. Labor Day Rock is a large rock with lots of overhangs, cracks and crevices and is filled with marine life and was a good, typical dive for the area, max depth around 90’ with a pretty much square profile. The visibility was about 20-25ft which is average for the area and the water was quite chilly. They’d been reporting 67-68 degrees but my dive computer read 64. However, my computer always seems to read a few degrees cooler than others, so 67 might be possible. I was hoping it would be 70 and usually is by this time but it’s taking a little longer to warm up this year. I packed my only wetsuit, a 3mm farmer john which has always been sufficient at 70 and up and it was ok on dive one but I pretty much shivered throughout dive 2 despite doing a decent job warming up during the surface interval.
Some of sites on the dive were lots of bait schools, snapper, grouper, toadfish, batfish, blue and gray angelfish, an octopus and some smaller critters too (nudi etc). The highlights, on ascent a visit by what appeared to be a sandbar shark at around 65’ and then at about 45’ the distinct clicks and squeaks of dolphin! I’d foolishly “stowed” my camera already (low vis) but when the pod appeared I quickly got it back out. We were treated to about a minute or so of the pod swimming about us checking us out, it was a first for me and was a pretty awesome way to end the dive.
The second dive, Mac’s Reef was an artificial reef made of large concrete culverts and debris. It’s closer to shore so a bit shallower, at around 75’. It wasn’t as filled with life as the natural reef and the vis was a bit less but was still an interesting dive. Because I was already shivering immediately on descent it was a short dive with a few batfish being the most interesting encounters.
Since this wasn’t a dive trip I only brought some of my camera gear (single strobe and no WAL) and this was the first time using an AO Cooler to haul and keep my camera in on the boat and it worked as well as others have advertised.
And of course a few photos:
Rest of the album:
Destin 2021
