I’ve Traveled All Over The World With My Mom But This Southern Destination Is The Place We Return To Year After Year

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to some pretty incredible places with my mom. Over the years, we’ve gone hiking everywhere from Maine to Taiwan; seen sights in London, Paris, and Washington D.C.; and explored some extremely charming small towns in our own neck of the woods, too.  But of all the exciting places we’ve traveled together, the one trip I wouldn’t trade for any bucket list destination is our annual beach trip.

After years of family beach trips, my mom and I (the true beach lovers in the family) decided we’d ditch my dad and brother and take our own mother-daughter trip. The summer after I graduated high school, we made the 4-hour drive from Birmingham to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, and a new tradition was born. That first year she let me bring a friend. I was headed off to college soon and at a stage in my life when everything was better with friends. The next year, it was just me and her, and it would remain that way for the next 12 years.

Through every season—college, early adulthood, and marriage for me, divorce and eventually retirement for my mom—we had this beach trip tethering us together. We looked forward to October all year long, in the weeks leading up we prayed for sunny weather and exchanged texts about what clothes we were planning to pack.

This year, we broke our hard-and-fast mother-daughter-only rule and brought my husband along, but only so he could see our 5-month-old daughter experience the ocean for the first time. Next year, it’ll go back to being just us girls—all three of us now.  

Why The Beach Is The Best Place To Go With Your Mom

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the beach is my very favorite place in the world to go with my mom. It’s a simple trip that requires minimal planning, offers maximal relaxation, and most importantly, provides the perfect environment for bonding. During our long walks along the water, I get a chance to learn about my mom as a person, rather than just my mom. We spend hours floating in the salty waves or reading our books and sunbathing side by side. We always, always have a cooler packed with my mom’s curry chicken salad on croissants. If it rains, we give ourselves a green light to go shopping at the outlets without feeling guilty for squandering precious beach time. No one has to do any planning or logistics; we simply focus on one another and see where our days take us.  

In our early years of taking this trip, we shifted our spot to Destin, Florida, and began creating traditions that have stuck around for more than a decade. Every few years, we discover something new, and add it to our running list of must-do’s. We always have one dinner at Stewby’s Seafood Shanty on Okaloosa Island. We never miss an opportunity to grab donuts at The Donut Hole. And now that we know about the existence of a Filipino buffet and market about 30 minutes from our condo, we make it a point to go for lunch on the way home. It’s about the only thing that makes it bearable to end our vacation.

Tips For Having The Best Mother-Daughter Beach Vacation

Over the past 13 years, we’ve all but perfected the art of the mother-daughter beach trip. Here are our best tips for making the most of your time together.

• Make an effort to unplug. Nothing will dampen your bonding time like being glued to a device. While we don’t have a no-phones rule, we both try to be present with one another and use our phones only to blast beach tunes or check the score of the Alabama game.
• Share the load. There’s not a lot of work involved in our beach trips, save some umbrella and chair lugging and a few dirty dishes to be washed, but it’s important that all the duties don’t fall on mom. Since it’s easy to slip into an old habit of having mom do the brunt of the work, I do my best to share the duties and treat her too.
• Take lots of pictures. You may feel silly snapping a selfie, but I promise you, you won’t regret having the memories of your time together. Every year around the time of our trip, I get a Facebook memory of my mom on the very same trip 7 or 9 years ago, and it never fails to make me smile.