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The other Florida: Dolphins, sugar-sand beaches and helicopter tours on the Panhandle

Think of Florida and you’ll probably conjure up images of Disney World and the mayhem of nearby theme parks, maybe the art deco of Miami Beach, alligators of the Everglades and the 100-mile road bridge over the ‘Keys’ islands that spatter southwards almost as far as Cuba.

Panama City Beach: Possibly hellish during Spring Break, but heavenly in the quieter months

If you know your stuff, you may also recall the home of the space shuttle, Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre, or the 200-mile retirement home that forms the east ‘Gulf’ coast, where rich Americans go to wear sun visors, play golf and er, die.

But I bet you won’t think about the Florida where the young people hang out these days. The bit you get to if you drive north-west of Orlando for 360 miles into another time zone. The bit along the road from New Orleans; the undiscovered bit – the Panhandle.

We’re in Panama City Beach, an up-and-coming family destination with a fancy new airport, modern apartment accommodation and a new cutie-pie flat-pack town centre, Pier Park, that feels like it’s been modelled on the set of the Truman Show movie.

It’s most famous as one of the destinations for ‘spring break’, a period of about three weeks in the run-up to Easter when tens, even hundreds, of thousands of college students arrive for a massive booze-fuelled beach party.

By the time we’d arrived the party’s over, the students have left and families are gradually starting to arrive. It’s gloriously quiet.

After our terrible British winter, we were gasping for some sunshine, fun and a rest. We were after a destination where a teenager would feel at ease, have loads of stuff for us all to do but without the related stresses of an assault on the Orlando theme parks.

Is there enough here to keep a teenager occupied, we wondered?

‘I want to swim with dolphins,’ said ours - Emilie, aged 13.

Dorsal fun: Emilie hangs on as Indie the dolphin takes her for a ride...

We’d landed in the right place. We headed off to see the jet ski dude.

He looked like a cross between Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe. Regulation baseball cap flipped backwards, wrap-around shades, half for protection from the sun, half for cool. He’d just finished chewing through a pint of the local speciality, boiled Cajun peanuts.

‘My name is Billy,’ he said with a musical Southern states drawl. ‘I’m gonna be your guide for the next two hours.’

Alabaster sands and green ocean: Shell Island is a deserted paradise

With only one other mum and daughter on the tour (told you it was quiet) we were able to plane across the bay on jet skis at up to 50mph to the beautiful, impossibly white sand dunes of the uninhabited Shell Island. This is a ridiculous amount of fun.

‘Dad I’m scared!’ said Emilie when we docked on the beach. What? Too fast? Err, no. Billy had just spotted a 3ft bull shark swishing through the warm, clear shallows looking for lunch. 

MY SWIM WITH A DOLPHIN

By Emilie Browning, aged 13

Florida is famous for its dolphins but remember DO NOT swim with wild dolphins or feed them.

Firstly, it's illegal and secondly they can become too friendly with humans. That means they end up relying on being fed by humans and some bad people pour beer and put fireworks into their blowholes, which can kill them. That’s why it’s illegal to swim with wild dolphins.

Go Indie! Our dolphin twists and turns in the air...

But luckily you can swim with dolphins in Panama City Beach at the Gulf World Marine Park. It is a ‘must do’!

My dolphin was called Indie and I shared her with about six other kids. It was really fun because we stroked her individually and held her hands and we got a cute kiss from her.

We learned about how they might look like they’re smiling all the time but they can be quite aggressive in the wild. They have lots of marks on their skin because dolphins like to bite eat other. Luckily they have lots of layers of skin so they don’t feel it.

We got pictures taken by a professional photographer and we got to choose from a dolphin hug or a dorsal fin ride. Everyone choose the dorsal fin ride around the pool. No surprise there.

I was scared that Indie would miss my hand when she swam past to collect me but she didn’t.

I’d love to do this again and recommend it to everyone. Maybe next time I’ll try the ‘be a trainer for a day’.

Luckily, swimming with wild dolphins has now been outlawed so we weren’t going to get in the water with this baby either.

After exploring the dunes and hunting for shells, we jetted out into a heavy swell in the Gulf of Mexico to watch dolphins loop in and out of the waves from a safe distance.

Swimming with dolphins would be for another day. As would sailing with dolphins, dolphin-spotting from a helicopter and supping wine on the balcony of our apartment watching dolphins swim into the sunset after an impromptu show just for us. There’s a lot of dolphin activity up here.

First impressions, though, can be deceiving.

We arrived late evening in a tropical storm. The rain had reduced visibility to almost zero – just enough to see that the street we were staying on looks exactly like every other street in America; a mix of gas stations, drive-thrus and modern box-like buildings. But it’s what’s on the other side of the street and what’s in the boxes that count.

Next day the storm had blown away and we were treated to the perfect American seascape.

We were staying in a huge two-bed apartment with all the mod cons, air con, big TVs, walk-in wardrobe bigger than our spare room at home, on the 28th floor of a high-rise block right on the beach.

Instantly we felt at home. It is, after all, someone’s home, albeit their holiday home. But it’s also a resort so you get the added benefits of a gym, sauna, a couple of outdoor pools, beach loungers and free DVD rentals.

There is a regular flypast by a flock of prehistoric-looking pelicans and sometimes by space-age jets from the nearby military base. The sunsets we can see from our balcony are spectacular.

We could have spent the whole time holed up here. But there’s so much to do up and down the beach. Perhaps not surprising as its nearly 30 miles long.

At one end of the main drag is the ready-made resort village of Carillon Beach, where an osprey casually swooped to collect a hapless lunch fish from the lake as I tucked into the local speciality of fish tacos at the lakeside restaurant, Castaways.

Snap happy: An alligator roams in St Andrews State Park

Panhandle bites: Three great places to chow down...

Liza’s kitchen (lizaskitchen.com)Everything’s made from scratch including the bread. From the outside it looks like a nothing shop. Inside is a superb little hippie place with an amazing wine selection.

Hook’d Pier Bar (hookedpierbar.com)

Good food while sitting on bar stools overlooking the beach.

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Beach eats: Hook'd Bar and Grill

Boondocks (boondocksfl.com)On the water by the airboats. A wonderful wooden hick venue for lunch, serving scrummy pulled pork sandwiches and beers all watched over by pelicans.

At the other end is St Andrew State Park, where fine white Caribbean-style beaches enclose a small network of lakes and woodland, which is home to deer, green heron and other big birds, turtles and alligators. You can hire pontoon boats to take yourself across to Shell Island or hire bikes.

It’s not often you get a chance to go gator-spotting on a bicycle.

In between, there’s a ton of fun stuff to do. Did I mention dolphins?

Billy’s one kind of cool, Becky’s another. She’s a wildlife photographer from Utah who boosts her income in the holiday season by flying helicopter tours up and down Panama City Beach for Panhandle Helicopter. It was the boss of this company that snapped the famous tsunami of clouds photograph that went viral last year.

As we lift off between the beachfront apartments and fly east along the coast she explains how fish congregate between two parallel sandbars that run all the way along the beach. There’s a lot see if you know what to look for. We don’t.

She also explains rather ruefully how people have so much admiration for wildlife artists without ever considering that the painter has copied their ‘masterpiece’ from a picture taken by a photographer who’s been out since 5am every day trying to capture the perfect moment.

Then she swishes the aircraft round to show us a closer view of dolphins mucking about in the sea below. Having that kind of eye at the helm made this tour a truly exceptional and exciting experience. 

Our final encounter with dolphins was at Gulf World Marine Park, on the main strip.

This is a quaint, manageable and well-managed wildlife park dedicated to conservation and education. They nurse beached, injured and abandoned dolphins, fish, birds and animals.

It’s small enough that you can visit the whole park in an afternoon and the shows are the right mix of information and fun. The young woman presenting the children’s furry animal show sounded so much like comedian Sarah Silverman as she rounded on her prey – a bemused young boy – it was hilarious.

Views most cameras can't reach: The helicopter company were responsible for the amazing tsunami cloud photos of the Pandhandle that were published last year

Aerial adventure: The Brownings join wildlife photographer Becky on a helicopter flight

But of course, you come here for dolphins. And it’s here that Emilie’s dream came true. She got in the pool with a 8ft mammal called Indie.

We fell in love Panama City Beach and at first we couldn’t put our fingers on the reason why.

This is Florida - with its gamete of tropical weather, turquoise seas, white sands, dolphins, beach bars, amusement parks, boat trips, wildlife and tourist tat, even drive-thru whisky stores.

  More... More brilliant family holiday ideas in our archive Heading to the US? Get inspired here A penguin's perspective at SeaWorld's enchanting new attraction

But here everyone is super polite, relaxed and friendly. There’s next to no traffic and tucked inside some of those non-descript road-side boxes are some amazing restaurants.

As long-time local restaurateur, owner of the Boarshead Barry Ross, put it: ‘This is Florida. But it’s the other Florida.’

And that’s it! This is Florida but it’s a Florida without the old people and the Florida without the stress. And I hope like us, you get a chance to check it out one day.

OUR FAVOURITE ATTRACTIONS Ocean high: Richard and family whirred above the Pandhandle's coastline on a helicopter tour

Panhandle Helicopter (panhandlehelicopter.com)

Amazing views as you fly up and down the beach on a short but fun, fish spotting tour from the air. You might be really lucky and get Becky as your pilot. Panama City Airboat Tours (panamacityairboat.com)

A gentle spin on the ‘Wild Thang’ airbaoat along the dredged out waterway that runs to New Orleans and into the bayous. We caught a rare display of an eagle and an osprey taking part in a violent territorial dispute overhead and saw a 13ft ‘gator.

Gulf World Marine Park (gulfworldmarinepark.com) It’s where you swim with dolphins, among other animal and fishy fun in an educational environment.  Sunset cruise (islandtimesailing.com)

Emilie and other children took turns to drive the catamaran as a Super Mario look-a-like entertained the guests as we sailed out to view dolphins and watch as the sun set into the sea with a glass of wine. Relaxing and fun. Adventures at Sea (watersportspc.com)

Exciting jet-ski tour to Shell Island and into the Gulf to ride the waves and look out for dolphins.

Crazy golf (coconutcreekfun.com)

Of the half-dozen or so courses in town, each has its own gimmick. Ours had two 18-hole courses and a maze. None of the people on the leaderboard for completing the maze in the fastest time had done so without cheating, said the maze guy, who changes the route every month.

Travel Facts

Part of the appeal of Panama City Beach is that it’s slightly off the beaten tourist trail so while getting there is a little tricky from the UK there are plenty of options.

You can fly to the new Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport from the UK via Atlanta with Delta/KLM from around £650 per person, flybeaches.com

Alternatives include flying direct to Orlando or Tampa, about 5 1/2 hours by car. Or closer options would be to New Orleans, Atlanta, Pensacola, Tallahassee or Jacksonville.

For non-drivers there is a trolley bus service that runs length of the beach six days a week, v2.baytowntrolley.org/fares

There’s masses of accommodation for all budgets and much of it can be booked through Resort Quest by Wyndham Vacation Rentals, which represents a huge range of holiday lets along Florida’s Gulf coast. A two-bedroom apartment at the Tidewater complex, sleeping up to six people, will cost from around £800 a week, wyndhamvacationrentals.com

We stayed at Tidewater Condominiums – in a luxury 2-bed apartment on the 28th of 30 floors, tidewater-beach-resort.com/

For more information on visiting Panama City Beach, visit visitpanamacitybeach.com.









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