At Eli’s graduation party a few weeks ago, I was blessed to sell a very large painting of a sunset on 30A (along Florida’s “Emerald Coast”). It’s not so hard to part with, knowing that it is going to the home of a long-time, beloved family friend, who might as well be a blood relation!
Mrs. Suellen Campbell is an incredible storyteller (she’s authored a children’s book at the insistence of her many friends), and she asked me for a background story to the painting.
Here’s the story:
I usually paint from my own travel photos, but I actually saw a photo on a 30A realtor’s Instagram feed (@theclevergoose) and loved it. The cotton candy skies and the clear turquoise waters are what always stand out to me when I think of our beach vacations on the Florida coast.
When we moved to central Mississippi in 1999, we noticed that our town seem to empty out from the end of May to Labor Day. We asked our neighbors, who were homegrown Mississippians from Hattiesburg, where everyone went. They immediately responded with confidence, “Destin!”
A few years later, with tiny kids in tow, we joined the throngs of Mississippians in Destin, Florida. We’d be stuck in traffic on Highway 98, turn our heads and see the red “D” tag for our neighborhood on a nearby windshield and know that we’d ARRIVED!
After a few years of renting various condos in and around Destin, we noticed that the crowd was getting younger and rowdier. Our friends noticed it too and began talking about less crowded areas just a little further down the road, off the beaten track, called 30A. The kids were older now and bigger, so we enjoyed spreading out in some of the beachy homes of Watercolor and dining at nearby Seaside’s Barefoot Nachos.
A few years after that, one of hubby’s co-workers bought a condo in Water Sound, which is yet a little further down 30A and invited us to check out that beach. We were delighted to find it virtually deserted! (Did you know that stores on 30A sell bumper stickers that proclaim, “30A LOVES MISSISSIPPI”?)
Now we enjoy Water Sound and other little spots along 30A, traveling wherever friends suggest we should explore. I’m always armed with a camera, and I follow several IG accounts through the year that are focused on the area. On any other vacation, I pull out the whip and demand we visit every top museum and zoo in the area, but not at the beach. This is where we unwind, watch for beautiful cloudscapes, eat rather poorly, and re-set for the rest of the busy year.
