Destin on another Best Florida Beaches List

Southern Living Magazine Honors Destin, Seaside, & Panama City Beach

Posted on 7/19/2019

Well, it happened again. The Destin area coastline has once again received acclaim for having some of the best beaches in Florida. Many of our Ocean Reef Resorts guests already know that our beaches are NOT among the best… they ARE the Best!

Destin Florida Beach
Southern Living Magazine is singing our praises now on a list of beaches in Florida that are considered the best. Actually among the top ten beaches listed the Emerald Coast was honored three times with individual honors for Destin, Seaside, and Panama City Beach! Ocean Reef Resorts has fine distinctive vacation rental properties near or right beside all of these beaches that stretch from Destin to Miramar Beach, all along Scenic 30A in South Walton and into Panama City Beach. We have been proud and happy to have been providing gracious, hospitable vacation accommodations to literally generations of families since 1982.

The greatly esteemed Southern Living Magazine is known as the Better Homes & Gardens or House Beautiful of the American south. This magazine was established over 50 years ago in Birmingham, Alabama, and has about three million subscribers. It features articles about southern lifestyles, residential architectural designs, fashionable home interiors, garden plans, recipes, culture, and travel.

Southern Living Magazine readers have consistently rated the Destin area as The Top Family Beach Destination for many years. They also list our sugary shore on their Best Beach honors list nationwide. Recently in 2017, they published a lengthy article entitled This Is Why Everyone Should Plan a Trip to Destin which featured popular places like our shimmering bright beaches, wonderful restaurants, the Henderson Beach State Park, the Harbor Walk Marina, and fishing. It also mentioned pontoon boat rentals, watersport recreation craft, the Buccaneer Pirate Cruise and Big Kahuna's Water Park for fun times. You'll be happy to know that our Reef Rewards program provides special complimentary reduced rate discounts to our guests for all of these exciting adventures.

Here is a breakdown of Southern Living Magazine's latest Best Beaches in Florida list. Destin, Seaside, and Panama City Beach were each listed individually for excellence, but they represent the western, middle and eastern edge of our Emerald Coast. The other seven "contenders" included the following:

Pensacola Beach Beach
Pensacola Beach is our western neighbor with a sugary shoreline that is the part of the longest federally protected coastline in the United States, known as Gulf Islands National Seashore which connects over to the far side of Destin.

Clearwater is a three-mile stretch of beach backed by hotels and restaurants north of St. Petersburg, which is also near Tampa. It features breathtaking sunsets over the Gulf which are due west from there, and the article said it boasts 361 sunny days per year. However several other sources say the average is 246 sunny days. Destin has 221.

St. Pete Beach next to St. Petersburg and Tampa has been a favorite place to go among northeasterners since the late 1920s. They have old historic hotels like "The Don Cesar" which is also called "The Pink Palace."

Anna Marie Island is south of St. Petersburg and Tampa. This barrier island has weathered many storms since it has been around since the early 1900s and has a city pier dating back to 1911. The article notes it for having "plenty of old Florida charm" and "local seafood dives."

Sanibel Island is way down in southwestern Florida near Fort Myers. It is known as "The Seashell Capital of the World" because many of them wash up there during high tide. You may gather lots of seashell souvenirs along the beach but always be sure to wear your flip flops. Those shells can be sharp and are not meant for bare feet!

Higgs Beach is even further south in Key West and comprises almost seventeen acres of the Clarence S. Higgs Memorial Beach Park. A pier there and a tower are noted as worth seeing.

Cocoa Beach is on an isthmus facing the Atlantic Ocean sandwiched in between Patrick Airforce Base and the Cape Canaveral Kennedy Space Station. This makes it a fun place to be when rockets are launched into space almost two dozen times per year. Tickets there are $50 for adults and $41 for children under the age of twelve.

Besides Southern Living Magazine, our Destin area beaches have also received a famed claim of excellence as reported in Forbes Magazine and National Geographic, among others.

Beach on 30A
Scenic 30A regularly receives recognition as a "Blue Wave Beach" by a national program that conducts extensive research of every beach in America. This kind of environmental certification is awarded as the 'nation's highest acclaim for cleanliness and pristine natural beauty. Scenic 30A is also the longest contiguous shoreline in the United States to receive this acclaim of excellence since it stretches nineteen miles from one end to the other. This includes the sugary coastline that borders Dune Allen, Santa Rosa Beach, Blue Mountain Beach, Grayton Beach, Watercolor, Seaside, Seagrove Beach, Alys Beach, Seacrest Beach, Rosemary Beach, and Inlet Beach.

If you have visited us before you already know our beaches are the best of the best! If you haven't yet experienced this tropical paradise that's famously known as the Emerald Coast, have fun taking a look here on our very user-friendly website. Vivid imagery, detailed descriptions, aerial location views, seasonal rates, and calendar dates of availability are displayed for each one of our wonderful Florida vacation rental properties. We hope to see you soon!

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