 
Ever wonder where the sand under your feet came from? You might be surprised Chances are, if you’ve burned your heels on a blistering Southern beach, you’ve made landfall on a barrier island. Most of the South’s beaches are the seaward shore of barrier islands, but still, these enigmatic slivers of beach and marsh have a bit of an identity problem. It might be easiest to understand what barrier islands are not. They are not the tops of volcanic protrusions, such as Hawaii. Nor are barrier islands the breaching crests of oceanic reefs, such as the Bahamas, or the appendages of partially drowned continents, such as Madagascar. A barrier island, quite frankly, might blush at the suggestion of such natal drama. A barrier island is a tendril of sand in constant motion. An elongated, vegetated, naturally propagated ridge of dune and marsh and maritime forest, running parallel to whatever mainland shore it buffers and protects. Formed of sands and sediments that were moved, and continue to be moved, by rivers and waves and currents and winds, barrier islands roll over themselves, wax, wane, and migrate north, south, east, or west. The sand that burns your feet today was, the eon before yesterday, the granite cloak of an Appalachian cliff. Or a part of a different beach one hundred miles away. Given their signature natures of strength and frailty, obstinacy and mercuriality, it seems only fitting that the South should boast the longest single development of barrier islands in the world, a seventy-plus-island chain that stretches from North Carolina to Florida. But these are not the only barrier islands in the region. The imprimatur applies to the Gulf Islands off the Texas shore, to the Isles Dernieres of Louisiana, to Petit Bois off the coast of Mississippi. Barrier islands host some of the South’s wildest beaches, best-known coastal communities, enclaves where the descendants of slaves still speak in the dialects of their forebears. Barrier islands are where you find sea grass and sea grass basket makers, nesting oystercatchers, roosting pelicans, a Scotch bonnet, an empty beach. Whatever one believes is the role of a barrier island — for it to be home to humans or sea turtles, or that each can exist in the embrace of the other — it is to the benefit of all to understand that their future has more to do with the rising tides of beach lovers than the twice-daily ablutions of the sea. —T. Edward Nickens ALABAMA Dauphin Walloped by countless hurricanes, Dauphin still stands strong as a perfect Gulf getaway By Winston Groom Dauphin Island has attracted attention from the earliest times as a place of beauty, tranquility, and strategic importance. Its first known human inhabitants were a mound-building people, which is probably a good thing, since in addition to whatever religious significance their mounds had, they could also stand on them during hurricanes when the rest of the island was under fifteen feet of water. Much of the history of Dauphin Island is the history of hurricanes. Settlements would become established with shipping warehouses, forts, turtle pens, hotels, churches, fishing and shellfishing enterprises, and canneries, and then one day all would be gone. When memory was sufficiently faded, the building process would start anew. In 1815, a British army, still licking its wounds from a drubbing by Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, used Dauphin Island as a campground. One of their officers described it this way: “The warm weather brought out a multitude of snakes from their lurking places. That was bad enough, but the alligators, which during the winter months lie in a dormant state, now began to awaken. One of them entered a tent, in which only a woman and child chanced to be, and having stared around as if in amazement, walked out again without offering to commit any violence.” Today the island thrives, but not in the way of its commercialized counterparts Gulf Shores and Orange Beach to the east. There are no high-rise condos, amusement parks, grand hotels, fancy restaurants, or swank bars. Fishing around the island is excellent, with an abundance of speckled trout, redfish, and flounder in the passes, bars, and shell banks on the bay side, and amberjack, grouper, snapper, and king mackerel around the artificial reefs and oil rigs in the Gulf. For bird-watchers, the big show comes during spring and fall when the pines and oaks teem with such delights as indigo buntings, rose-breasted grosbeaks, warblers, and other rara avises migrating north or south (as well as numerous eagles, falcons, and hawks who want to make sure they don’t get there). For a half century there has been the Dauphin Island Sailboat Regatta, an April race between hundreds of boats and yachts, and July brings the annual Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo. Other than those events — hurricanes excepted — the pace is slow, the water clear, the beaches sugary white sand, the Gulf breezes gentle, and the sunsets and sunrises magnificent. If you want excitement, there is an hourly car ferry that will take you across to the hubbub of Gulf Shores. FLORIDA Dog Looking for "Old Florida?" Hop a boat and head out to Dog Island By Jimbo Meador On many barrier islands, the social pecking order is determined by the size of your massive beachfront home or your ritzy yacht tied up at the marina. On Dog Island, the local with the rustiest vehicle gets the deepest nods of respect. And so it goes on Dog, an island that runs wonderfully counter to most things Florida. To get there you’ll need to take a water taxi in Carrabelle or thumb a ride on a local’s boat for the three-and-a-half-mile run. Or, if you have access to some wings, take advantage of the island’s 2,500-foot grass runway. But you better call ahead if you plan to spend the night. The only lodging on the island is the eight-room Pelican Inn. A majority of the 1,700-acre island is able to exist in its natural state through the efforts of the Nature Conservancy, which owns about seventy percent of the land. And while the human traffic is at a minimum, migrating birds keep the airways hopping. A whopping two hundred and thirty-two documented species visit Dog. The salt marsh, fed by saltwater creeks on the east end, is usually clear enough to observe marine life while wading. The aquatic grasses on the flats around the island are the nursery areas for diverse marine organisms. These flats offer superb fishing for the shallow-water angler, and the beaches offer opportunities for surf-fishing. During the summer months loggerhead sea turtles lumber above the high-tide line to nest on the sand. Private boaters will appreciate Tyson’s Harbor, a natural harbor located on the north side of the island that offers good protection from the east, south, and west winds. You will not find gasoline in the harbor or anywhere else on the island. Don’t miss a walk on the beach at night under the stars. If your timing is right and you’re there during a full moon, you’ll never forget the experience. Just be mindful of the loggerheads. GEORGIA Cumberland The crown jewel of the barrier islands, Cumberland retains the draw that attracted the Carnegie family a century ago By Allston McCrady Gogo Ferguson, one of the few full-time residents on Cumberland Island and a descendant of the Carnegie line, has plenty of wonderful memories of growing up on the island, but the most indelible might be “poacher hunting” with her grandmother. “We’d go out at night in our pajamas in the Jeep,” says Ferguson. “When Grandma would find poachers she’d hold them at gunpoint until thepolice arrived.” Not surprisingly, Grandma’s passionate defense of the island’s wildlife made her unpopular with local poachers, one of whom is said to have burned down the Carnegie family’s Dungeness Mansion to avenge being injured by an overseer in a shootout. Cumberland Island is no stranger to conflict. During the past century, it has dodged numerous environmental threats, from would-be developers (including Hilton Head developer Charles Fraser) to prospective strip miners (for titanium and ilmenite ore) to the federal government, which eyed it as a rocket-launching site before opting for Cape Canaveral. Many of the battles were fought by the Carnegie family, who eventually transferred the island to the National Park Service in 1972, ensuring Cumberland would never become another development statistic. Today the Park Service allows no more than three hundred daily visitors to explore sixteen thousand acres of wilderness and eight thousand acres of salt marsh. I shared my first ferry ride to the island with a group of grizzled hunters selected by a park-sponsored lottery to thin the island’s deer and wild hog population. The southernmost of Georgia’s “golden isles,” Cumberland is nearly twenty miles long, an area larger than Manhattan. If you stand at one end of its vast, empty beach, the far end is imperceptible, fading out of sight with the curve of the earth. The island attracts campers, hikers, bikers, bird-watchers, kayakers, shell seekers, and fishermen who disappear down forest paths and wide dunes in search of private enclaves. When exploring the island, you are more likely to encounter an armadillo or a wild horse. Given its isolation and quiet solitude, it’s no wonder that John F. Kennedy, Jr., chose Cumberland for his famously private nuptials. He also gave the nod to Gogo Ferguson, a well-known jeweler, to design the couple’s wedding bands. Her jewelry is inspired by island wildlife. She casts in silver and gold directly from molds made from animal parts: rattlesnake ribs; armadillo scapulae; dolphin discs; alligator toes; and even a raccoon’s penis bone, given the moniker “coon pecker.” Ferguson recalls when Kennedy called her from his honeymoon in Istanbul to bemoan the fact that the press had finally caught up to him, saying, “I wish we’d stayed on the island.” It’s a sentiment shared by more than a few visitors. LOUISIANA Chandeleurs Anglers can rest easy: The Chandeleur Islands are rising again By Monte Burke Louisiana’s Chandeleur Islands were once Eden. The crescent-shaped necklace of uninhabited island pearls some sixty miles east of New Orleans was designated part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge in 1904 by Teddy Roosevelt. The islands played host to thousands of terns and the last remaining thriving populations of brown pelicans. Miles of sea grasses swayed in the wind and wavelets, teeming with shrimp, speckled trout, and redfish. The Fall came swiftly. On August 29, 2005, the Chandeleurs stood as the mainland’s last line of defense in the face of Hurricane Katrina. They were crushed by storm-swollen waves that reached forty feet high. By the time those same waves hit New Orleans, they’d been reduced to twenty-eight feet. Might not sound like much, but without the sacrifice of the Chandeleurs, the unfathomable damage to the Big Easy and surrounding areas would have been even worse. “They were nature’s speed bump,” says Shea Penland, a coastal geologist at the University of New Orleans. “They saved a lot of lives.” A few days after Katrina hit, Penland hopped in a scout plane to look for the fifty-mile-long islands he had studied for his entire career. “We couldn’t find them at first,” he says. When he did finally spot them, miles south of their original location, the once-necklaced pearls were scattered about randomly, their string having been violently snapped. Rob Recio, owner of the fishing guide service Chandeleur Outfitters, hosted his first post-Katrina client a month after the storm. The man stood silently, as if in shock, just staring at the scarred waterscape. The pictures and stories transmitted over the newswires never told the real story. “He finally turned to me and whispered, ‘It looks like an atomic bomb went off here,’” says Recio. Katrina devoured 70 percent of the Chandeleurs’ surface area. Individual islands lost one thousand feet of shoreline. Back in the 1980s scientists predicted that the Chandeleurs — an integral part of the day-to-day life in the matrix of wetlands in the northern Gulf — would be around for another three hundred years. Now, says Penland, “they might not make it through the next decade. It all depends on if we have another hurricane.” But like the city and people they defended, the Chandeleurs have proved resilient. Nature has its ways. Almost three years later, with no human intervention, half of the lost shoreline has been recovered. The terns and pelicans have come back home. The speckled trout and redfish populations are as robust as ever. “Sometimes when I’m out there on the boat, I forget for a moment or two that just a little while ago the world turned upside down,” says Recio. Given a grace period, the islands may recover. Eden may be forever lost, but the promise of redemption remains. MISSISSIPPI Horn Whether you're looking for inspiration or simply to catch a few trout, Horn Island is worth a visit By Allston McCrady The highly acclaimed artist Walter Inglis Anderson once strapped himself to a tree on Horn Island to witness the raw power of a hurricane. “To be a servant and slave of all elements,” he said. Modern visitors usually commune with the elements by simply rising off their beach towels and taking a dip in the Gulf. Horn Island is a rugged fourteen-mile-long narrow island of soft sand, ospreys, slash pine, and sea oats dangling off the Gulf Coast of Mississippi — a federal wilderness area managed by the National Park Service, a place to camp, picnic, or fish, accessible only by boat. And Anderson remains its most famous son. An idiosyncratic visionary, Anderson devoted eighteen years of his life to capturing the island’s natural wonders in watercolors, paintings, drawings, and his daily logs. In the sleepy coastal town of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Anderson would often leave his wife and children with no warning, just a scrawled note pinned to the screen door: “Gone to Horn Island.” Equipped with scanty provisions and watercolors, he would row his twelve-foot skiff twelve miles out to the island, then stay for weeks at a time, sketching and painting by day, sleeping under his skiff at night, battling mosquitoes and sand gnats, wading in lagoons to study alligators and waterfowl, climbing tree limbs to peer into birds’ nests, counting the stars. He felt more at home in this wild, natural setting than he did on the mainland. At first an outside observer of nature, he eventually felt like a participant, even naming some of his animal “familiars.” He got to know the pelicans so well that he attempted to transcribe their language phonetically. There were some close calls. Anderson nearly died from a water moccasin bite after reaching into a bird’s nest; then he set the island on fire trying to boil water to extract the poison. And then there was the hurricane experiment. While he experienced the fury of “the great leveler,” his family sent a Coast Guard cutter to rescue him, but Anderson didn’t want to leave the island. Chances are, you won’t either. NORTH CAROLINA Shackleford Visitors on Shackleford Banks share the beach with wild horses and the ghosts of former residents By T. Edward Nickens It’s not the old Wade’s Shore gravestones that come to mind, the mossy granite posts, tucked under tangled pines. Nor is it the simple cedar planks, flecked with old lichen. Instead, whenever I think of Shackleford Banks, southernmost of the famed Outer Banks of North Carolina, I think of the unmarked graves at this deeply hidden cemetery. There I can feel the island’s dead in my footsteps, in the dips and troughs that lie under a carpet of brown live oak leaves. It is the only cemetery left on the island. The sea has taken the rest. As far as barrier islands go, North Carolina’s Shackleford Banks is as enigmatic as they come. Stretching from the sandy hook at Cape Lookout to Bogue Inlet, the entire seven-mile-long island is a designated wilderness area, part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore. But it is hardly removed from the modern age. It’s barely a ten-minute boat ride to Shackleford Banks from Beaufort, and on summer weekends the best soundside beaches are packed hull-to-hull with boats. Ferries scurry back and forth, carrying day-trippers. People come to look for dolphins, for sand dollars, for the one-hundred-plus wild horses that are, depending on whom you talk to, a feral scourge or the scions of mounts ridden by sixteenth-century Spanish explorers. Few visitors know of the Wade’s Shore graves. Few visitors know the island’s human history very well at all. For the latter half of the nineteenth century, Shackleford Banks hosted small communities of shore-based whalers. Then, in 1896 and 1899, hurricanes battered the North Carolina coast. Many Shackleford Banks families put their small homes on barges and floated them across Bogue Sound. In their place, summer camps were built in the marshes, the dunes, the maritime woods that cloak the high ground. When the National Park Service bought Cape Lookout’s three islands in the late 1960s, hundreds of these camps remained. Few of those locals had paper deeds. Instead, they had granddaddies who’d squatted on land no one wanted. They had years of history on Shackleford Banks. But little that would hold up in court. Forced to leave, camp “owners” torched scores of their beloved fish camps — in grief, in rage, in protest. The price of preserving Shackleford Banks was paid in tears. Today, there’s not a hot dog stand, T-shirt shop, jukebox, stoplight, road, or year-round resident on the island. Just miles of blissfully desolate beach, where you can wander and paddle and fish, alone with your thoughts. And for me, the thoughts of those tucked away in hidden graves. Thinking of them, of the pitch and roll of my steps through the woods, I know that on Shackleford Banks, I am never truly alone. SOUTH CAROLINA Daufuskie Take it from a local: Getting to Daufuskie is easy; leaving is the challenge By Roger Pinckney Daufuskie. Daw-fusky. Say it right and it will roll off your tongue like poetry. “Sharp like a feather,” in Muskogean, from the long sand spit running south towards the old Tybee lighthouse, where big ships bull their way upriver to Savannah. Indians left more than a name. Deep in our cool green woods, a litter of broken pottery and stone tools is scarcely covered by last year’s leaves. Three miles by five, Daufuskie is forty-five minutes by boat from the rest of North America. We call it the Right Side of the River — dirt roads, no traffic lights, no traffic at all, and our fast food has fins and fur and feathers. Wheeling birds, cannonades of surf, the moon rising over the ocean, round and gold like a pirate doubloon. There’s some stalled development — beachfront inn, a string of rental cottages and a couple of golf courses, which we don’t mind too much, as nobody makes us play them. Sixty thousand tourists came last year. They took pictures, left footprints and money. Some liked it, most didn’t. Too far, too quiet, not enough to do. “You gotta have a loose wire to live here!” Loose wires, that’s us, smoke and sparks from a great cultural short circuit. Shrimpers, crabbers, potters, and poets who blew ashore here over the years, and sundry fugitives from the law — of averages and otherwise. White folk mixed up with the Gullah, descendants of West African slaves who liven our days with their contagious good humor, pithy philosophy, and incomprehensible brogue. We leave only if we have to, for groceries mostly. Halfway through each foray, we expedite our return by checking off what we can just as well do without. But we never forget lightbulbs, liquor, or toilet paper. Lightbulbs. I was here in 1953 when they threw the switch and the lights came on. Daddy was guest of honor, the marine engineer who strung the wires across twelve miles of river and marsh. The governor came too, and when they trotted out Papy Burn, the retired lighthouse keeper, he hollered, “Governor, I wouldn’t trade a spoonful of my island for your whole damn state!” Noble sentiments that I did not fully appreciate until after the pillage of the rest of this coast by the real estate wizards. “Raise up a child in the way he shall go,” the Good Book says. I left like young men most always do, but I could not stay gone. I came back and settled in and got real regular at the First Union African Baptist, where I pulled the rope and rang the bell, first time I did that since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., thirty-odd years before. I made myself a promise that Sunday. I might leave again, but only feet first or in handcuffs. They hauled me off in handcuffs once, for coldcocking one of the developers’ goons with a bottle of Chablis way too good for him. But that’s a whole nother story. TEXAS Matagorda Leave South Padre's spring break crowd behind and head to Matagorda's Big Empty By Joe Nick Patoski Man and Matagorda Island have always had an uneasy relationship. Scattered bands of hunters and gatherers called the Karankawa, said to be cannibals, lived on the spit of sand between Pass Cavallo and Cedar Bayou for short periods over the island’s first four thousand years of existence, surviving the brutal annual infestation of sand flies, no-see-ums, and mosquitoes by slathering their bodies with greasy, stinky fish oil. A string of explorers followed over the next five hundred years beginning with Alonso Álvarez de Pineda, the first European to see Matagorda Island in 1519, followed by Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the Frenchman Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the pirate Jean Lafitte, and the oilman Clint Murchison. These days, though fifty-six thousand acres, Matagorda is a whole lot of the kind of empty that’s hard to find around these parts. Except for seasonal hunts sanctioned by the state, it’s pretty much the domain of whoever makes the effort to get there along with all kinds of critters that have flourished in man’s absence, including whitetail deer, fox, coyote, brown pelicans, pink roseate spoonbills, and during the winter, a significant portion of the biggest concentration of waterfowl on the continent. The gawky, so-big-no-wonder-it’s-endangered whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America, shares the Back Lakes on the lee side of the two-mile-wide island, some of the most pristine shallow flats and marshes found on the Gulf of Mexico, with tailing redfish, dense schools of trout, and abundant flounder during winter months, while abundant sea life thrives year-round along Matagorda’s thirty-eight-mile coastline. To get there, head for Port O’Connor at the end of State Highway 185, and charter a boat, sweet-talk your way into hitching a ride, or depart by sea kayak on one of four GPS paddling trails to the island. Bring along everything and prepare to put up with bugs and steamy humidity that will have you dreaming of smearing fish oil all over your body. The reward for jumping through those hoops is having the beach, the sand dunes, and practically the whole dang island to yourself, a coastal solitude found in few other places in these United States. VIRGINIA Hog This thin slice of sand plays host to every conceivable species of migrating wildlife — and only the occasional human By Donovan Webster The Accomac Algonquin called it Machipongo, meaning “fine dust and flies.” But it’s far more interesting than that. In fact, if motion is life — something many animals learn in their infancy — then the Virginia barrier island we now call Hog Island ranks among the liveliest places on earth. A four-mile-long apostrophe of sand and marl — rarely more than a mile across — Hog Island plays host to constantly migrating wildlife. With its breezy ocean side and lazy, shallow backside marsh, two completely different ecosystems cohabitate, separated by the island’s slim rampart. Perhaps three hundred species of bird stop by annually, many to refuel on baitfish and blue crabs before continuing someplace else. As do countless sea mammals and fish, including giant bluefin tuna — as big as Volkswagen vans — that move through in January, ripping into schools of young bluefish. In June and July, beach mornings reveal the tracks of loggerhead sea turtles, while at sea, pods of bottlenose dolphins and endangered right whales roll beneath the outstretched wings of seabirds such as brown pelicans and petrels. In the meadows of the island’s interior, songbirds and dozens of butterfly species work the low, scrubby landscape. And along the beach and marsh lines, wading seabirds pluck in the sand and silty black estuary mud, searching for morsels. Even the island keeps moving. Back in the day of the Accomac, Hog Island had stabilizing grasslands, plus pine and cedar hammocks. Then people came. By the late 1800s, Hog Island had a two-hundred-and-fifty-person town — Broadwater — on the ocean side near its southern tip, complete with a $100,000 lighthouse and, nearby, a “modern” Coast Guard station. Today, the sea grass and trees are largely gone. Broadwater is, too. A 1933 hurricane submerged the island — killing the grass and remaining trees — and the people of Broadwater did the only thing they could: They opened the doors and windows to their houses hoping the storm surge wouldn’t batter them into extinction, then got in their boats and ran for the mainland. Since then, Broadwater has been lost to the relentless assault of sea, storm, and tide. The former site of the town is a few hundred feet offshore to the east, beneath fathoms of Atlantic rollers. To protect it, Hog Island was sold to the Nature Conservancy in the 1970s. And in the late nineties — hoping to emulate author Henry Beston’s naturalist classic The Outermost House — I requested the opportunity to build a non-permanent home there: To spend a year living on-island with my young family. The book deal was ready, but the Nature Conservancy never could quite get around to saying yes. Seems they wanted to preserve and restore the place as a wilderness. Hard to blame them. Best of the Barriers Whether you're looking for a great meal or a killer campsite, we've found the barrier islands that deliver BEST FIVE-COURSE MEAL Salt Amelia Island, Florida Amelia Island lies just off the coast of northeastern Florida and is home to the seaside Ritz-Carlton, which in 2008 achieved AAA Five Diamond status for both the resort and its restaurant, Salt. Chef Richard Gras offers a seasonal menu with the freshest local ingredients and forty-two types of salt harvested from around the world. Try his daily five-course tasting meal known as the Chef’s Adventure Menu, or book a Seat in the Kitchen for private customized menus. Better yet, roll up your sleeves and join the cooking school June 11-12, 2008, for personalized culinary instruction. ritzcarlton.com BEST SPA The Cloister Sea Island, Georgia There is much to celebrate at this legendary coastal resort, but for a true taste of luxury treat yourself to its 65,000-square-foot spa with its twenty-three customized treatment rooms, lap pool, koi pond, labyrinth garden, and relaxation room with babbling brook. seaisland.com BEST GOLF Kiawah Island Golf Resort Kiawah Island, South Carolina Just twenty miles from Charleston, the Sanctuary has raked in top accolades on many fronts since it opened in 2004, but golf remains its calling card. The five championship courses on the island are consistently ranked in the Top 100 by major golf publications. In particular, the Pete Dye-designed Ocean Course, with its shifting winds and Atlantic views, is often called the most challenging course in America and has hosted the Ryder Cup, the World Cup, and the Senior PGA Championship. kiawahresort.com BEST BEACH SAND Siesta Key Florida Florida may be overly developed as a whole, but you can’t beat the quality of its sand. Siesta Key in particular, an island in southwest Florida, boasts the softest, cleanest, purest white sand, finer in texture than most refined sugar. Unlike most beaches that are composed of crushed shells, rocks, or lava, the sand of Siesta Key’s beaches was found by Harvard University’s geology department to be 99 percent pure quartz. The effect is dazzling and never feels hot. Siesta Beach is consistently rated among the top ten beaches in the world. siestakeychamber.com BEST FAMILY GETAWAY Hotel Galvez Galveston Island, Texas Before the infamous hurricane of 1900, Galveston was a bustling port city and the center of Texas high society. Now fortified with a seventeen-foot-high seawall, Galveston is a top resort destination. Kids will enjoy the water park, space center, dolphin sightseeing trips, IMAX theater, and aquarium. Adults can choose between fourteen museums, twenty art galleries, golf, Broadway shows, water sports, saltwater fishing, horseback riding on the beach, surfing, and historic house tours. Century-old Hotel Galvez, a 4-Diamond Wyndham Victorian Hotel on the beach, is by far the most elegant resort in Galveston, known as the Queen of the Gulf. wyndham.com BEST FISHING Gasparilla Inn & Club Gasparilla Island, Florida Come May, the only thing outnumbering the anglers on Boca Grande are the countless tarpon swimming past its shores. The annual migration — of fish and fishermen — is world renowned. But not everyone chooses to do battle with the Silver King. Redfish and snook offer year-round sport, and offshore fishing yields grouper, snapper, mackerel, and kingfish. The most elegant, quietly luxurious place to stay is the historic Gasparilla Inn Club, a national historic landmark. Its elite Old Florida appeal makes it a favorite of hard-core sportsmen and past presidents. Check out the glass reading tables decorated in rows of tarpon scales. the-gasparilla-inn.com BEST SHOPPING St. Armand’s Circle Lido Key, Florida John Ringling of circus fame planned a circular shopping center in 1917 now known as St. Armand’s Circle on Lido Key. With more than one hundred and thirty upscale stores, boutiques, and art galleries, this shopping destination has been compared to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Spend an evening enjoying the sidewalk cafés, restaurants, and ice cream parlors. For a truly refined experience, treat yourself to a stay at the Ritz-Carlton resort in nearby Sarasota Bay, which offers exclusive use of its posh Members Beach Club on the beautiful white sand beaches of Lido Key. visitstarmandscircle.com BEST SUNRISE AND SUNSET The Sanderling Resort & Spa Duck Island, North Carolina The Sanderling Resort & Spa is uniquely situated on one of the narrowest strips of land on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, sandwiched by two bodies of water. Early risers can catch sunup over the Atlantic, spend a day relaxing on unspoiled beaches or hiking through the adjacent Pine Island Audubon Bird Sanctuary, and settle in for a romantic dinner as the sun settles over the wide Currituck Sound. The low-rise cedar-shingled architecture of the Sanderling has a comfortable Nantucket feel: shabby chic on the outside, luxurious and spacious on the inside. thesanderling.com BEST CAMPING Pioneer Campground Sapelo Island, Georgia Sapelo Island was once an island playground for multimillionaire R.J. Reynolds (of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco fame). Ninety-seven percent of its 16,500 acres is now owned by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, teeming with deer, turkey, and the occasional wild cow. You can experience this pristine wilderness for yourself by camping at the highly popular Pioneer Campground in the R.J. Reynolds Wildlife Refuge. There you’ll find three Adirondack Shelters, including a comfort station with flush toilets and hot showers, beneath a canopy of ancient live oaks, all just one hundred yards away from a 13-mile pristine beach. For rates and reservations, call the Reynolds Mansion at (912) 485-2299. BEST BBQ Po’ Pigs Bo-BQ Edisto Island, South Carolina The owner’s name is Robert E. Lee, but everyone knows him as BoBo. He also happens to be the brother of one of the world’s most famous living artists: Jasper Johns. Some people drive a hundred miles to stuff their bellies with his smoked pork, liver hash, and massive Saturday buffet. (2410 Highway 174, Edisto Island, SC; phone 843-869-9003) |
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