Our vacation to the Florida panhandle this year was quite a blessing and a much needed escape from the rigors of the hustle and bustle of everyday life. One of the best parts of the vacation was that the condo we rented was right on a 12,000 square foot pool that you can see from the satellite view in Google Maps. The red square is where our condo was located.
The Google Map isn’t the best photo, but it’s the only way to get the entire pool in one photograph. The pool was divided into 4 individual sections where 3 of the side pools spilled over into the larger main section. The main section was probably 9,000 to 10,000 square feet and had a couple of longer, narrow sections that you could swim laps in if you so desired. The center round section, that was a pool all by itself, had a fountain in the middle and overlooked the largest section of the main pool as you can sort of see below:
Besides our condo, there were 4 other condo buildings on the pool along with 6 or 7 houses. The entire neighborhood the pool was in is known as Seacrest Beach and is a pretty big development of around 200 to 300 vacation rental homes. We usually plan our vacations around September or October and the Gratyon Beach 30A, South Fort Walton County (I don’t know quite what to call it) vacation off season begins about 2 to 3 weeks before we make our reservations. Therefore, most of the time there very few people around the pool and the development we stayed in making it nice and peacefully quiet. Also, the rental rates drop around 30% to 50% of the on season rates making it all the better.
I think we visited the pool every day, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. There were plenty of shady places to sit in for a long time and read a book, take a dip in the pool when you got a little warm and then back to reading or of course, a little nap. Some people spent hours in the direct sun and others like Jean and myself spent most of our time in the shade. I noticed a couple of ladies that spent nearly 5 hours in the direct sun one day and I was thinking how I would have been a crispy critter being in the sun that long. As it was, Jean and I got plenty of sun and probably a little too much.
Spending that much time leisurely enjoying pool time makes it hard to get back into the everyday routines that life usually revolves around. I’m working on the attitude to take life not quite so seriously and learning to live in the moment more. A couple more pics below may give you the idea this might be the place to take your next vacation.
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