Clearwater Beach: Actual Paradise?

I’ve always considered myself more of a mountain person than a beach person. When I get my pick of where to travel, I never see the appeal of sitting on a beach somewhere when I could be exploring. But between hectic park days, sitting on Clearwater Beach for a day was perfect.

Since we were in Florida anyway, I wanted to go to the beach. Even though the ocean is at least an hour from Orlando in either direction, I still thought the drive would be worth it. We were debating between Cocoa Beach and Clearwater, and I was pretty much set on Cocoa when I found out how much closer it was to Orlando. But reviews for Clearwater said it had the finest sand and bluest water. One place had even ranked it the most beautiful sunset in the United States. If we went to Cocoa Beach on the other coast, the sunset would be behind us if we were facing the ocean. That’s what ended up tipping the scales for me. Clearwater Beach it was.

We rolled in in our bright red Mustang convertible (rental) through this town that looked like vacation. I wondered if anyone actually lived there, or if the people working in the shops, restaurants and hotels commuted from outside of paradise. The sky was blue and everything seemed colorful. We found a place to park (a few blocks from the actual beach, and it didn’t appear that any parking was free), walked to the beach and set up our towels.

When we stepped into the water for the first time, it was way too cold for me. It was April, so I knew there was a chance the water would be pretty cold, but lots of people were still in up to their necks having fun, and I wanted to be one of them. Except the waves kept scaring me off.

There were so many waves. I don’t know if it was just the weather that day, or if the waves are usually that great on that beach, but they were the kind of waves that would knock you down. Not-so-coincidentally, they were also the kind of waves that made for a lot of fun if you had the right gear. We ended up going to a little beach hut to buy a boogie-board. That was what made the afternoon. I wasn’t so afraid to go in deeper when I had this floatation device velcroed to my wrist, so pretty soon we were taking turns riding the waves on this board.

Let me disclose something: the last time I was on a boogie-board, I was a child and I happened to also be on a beach in Florida. I hardly remembered anything about it from when I was kid, except that it was so fun that I spent most of the afternoon on my belly riding that board, and because of that, I ended up with the worst sunburn I had ever had on my back. So that day at Clearwater Beach, I was sure to use sunscreen. I sprayed waterproof SPF 50 all over my body multiple times throughout the day, and I still noticed myself getting pink. And every time I saw some pink I would re-apply.

Despite all that effort. I still ended up with a horrible sunburn. Everywhere. I was burned on my legs, my arms, my chest, my hands, my feet and even one of my eyelids. I have no idea why one and not the other, but I’ll count it as a blessing. I’m telling you all this now so that you can avoid the mistakes I made. I thought that since I was re-applying so frequently, I was fine. But the problem was that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the amount going on in each place. As I’m writing this, the red is gone and it has turned to tan, but definitely not an even, sun-kissed glow. I look like I have a skin condition. There are stripes of tan on me where I didn’t get enough sunscreen, and stripes that are normal, with the stripes meeting each other in a series of speckles from the spray-on application.

Luckily, this didn’t start hurting until the drive home, so we were able to enjoy walking the boardwalk, shopping in all the cute stores and eating at a restaurant right across the street from the beach, where I pretended I was Katy Perry by sipping gin and juice underneath the palm trees. That whole town was just so adorable. If we ever got tired of being in the water or lying on the beach, there was always something else to do within walking distance. Then we could go back to swimming and lying on the beach. I suddenly go the appeal of beaches as destinations.

And by the end of the day, we were tired and ready for showers, but we still got to see the beautiful sunset. And it was beautiful.