With ‘Shelter at Home’ restrictions slowly easing here in the US, my family and I were fortunate to be able to travel to Florida for a week’s holiday at the beach. We’d heard that the 30A Scenic Highway on the ‘Panhandle of Florida’ (the North Western part of the State in Walton County) had beautiful white sandy beaches and turquoise water of the Gulf of Mexico; and it was also one of the closer beaches to Memphis (about 488 miles, or 785 kilometres). Perfect! We booked in a last minute trip and discovered that it was all of those things and more, and it was a wonderful family holiday for us that dearly missed the ocean.

But….

With the recent death of George Floyd, and the subsequent protests around the US (and the world) while we were there, my mind was often far from white sandy beaches. What I found myself thinking about, besides how beautiful the area was, was also how white it was, in every sense of the word. It was a world away from the protests and there was minimal evidence of COVID concern. It often felt like the town in the movie ‘Pleasantsville’. We only ended up booking this holiday because our trip to Australia was cancelled due to COVID, and we weren’t sure if a beach holiday was enough of an ‘American experience’ - coming from coastal Australia, we basically grew up at the beach. But in light of recent events, it became quite educational, and very much an American experience.

In this photo story, I take you on a journey of this stunning location, and offer a little history relevant to the current times.