Your Vacation Can Live On and On

Sponsored by the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Anna Maria Island—how did my parents ever discover this enchanting spot on Florida’s West Coast? Their first month-long stay was in the early 2000s, when the internet was newfangled, Sunday-newspaper travel sections still steered snowbirds, and vacation influencers were your real-life neighbors, suspiciously tanned in February.

I do know I’m lucky they did, because when I say “enchanting,” I’m not just searching for one word to describe this always-warm barrier island’s turquoise blue waters and wide swaths of sugar-white sand, its active yet laid-back days that feel blissfully all yours until the last kiss of sunset. What I really mean is enchanted, in the magical sense.

Some 15 years had evaporated since our last visit, but it all felt so familiar as my daughter and I drove across the bridge from Bradenton to AMI, as the locals abbreviate this barrier island where a building-height restriction keeps lodgings and residences low rise and views for all maximized. Lara was six when we last bid AMI goodbye and only months old when we first found our way here. I remember intense trepidation about flying with a newborn and immense relief when every stranger on the plane was smiling and sympathetic, as if they knew baby’s first flight would bring immeasurable joy to her awaiting grandparents.

This may sound a bit sci-fi, but our return to Anna Maria Island allowed me to inhabit three space-time realities simultaneously (or at least it felt that way). Squinting at the horizon during a lazy morning on Cortez Beach, my daughter wasn’t the young woman beside me, paging through a novel, but a curly-haired little girl building a sand manatee, giddy from having just spied one of those cow-like creatures swimming offshore.

As Lara snapped selfies with a pelican, the years dissolved again, and I could see her in my dad’s arms gazing with wide-eyed amazement at what was surely one of this bird’s ancestors. My body seemed to remember its own youthful energy as we hopped on and off the free Island Trolley, sipped tropical smoothies at Ginny & Jane E’s Cafe, painted sand dollars at Shiny Fish Emporium, and paddled at night in clear-bottom, illuminated kayaks with a knowledgeable Fun Florida Tours guide. You can count the number of chain businesses here on one hand, which means your travel dollars help sustain the island’s authentic essence.

At a waterside restaurant, the taste of grouper, fished from nutrient-rich local waters and as sweet and fresh as I remembered, conjured an even earlier iteration of me and my maternal identity. Each bite brought my parents into focus as they sat across the table happily bouncing my infant while their food got cold so I could eat mine uninterrupted for a change—radiating their love for us, which still feels part of the aura of this place.

My parents gave me many gifts, and I count putting down vacation roots in the Gulf Islands among the greatest. Few destinations stay so fundamentally unchanged, so unspoiled that each encounter unlocks a multitude of memories.

Anna Maria Island is just 17 miles from Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, and the recent proliferation of low-cost nonstop flights from Northeast airports in Albany, Boston, Hartford, New Haven, Portland, Portsmouth, Providence, and Westchester County makes it easier than ever to put your toes in the sand and create your own bookmarks in time. Whether you’re fleeing winter, treating your kids to a seaside spring break, or looking ahead to off-season deals in the summer and fall, when the island’s warmth is tempered by Gulf breezes and frozen bevvies, there’s no wrong time to start a tradition that is the surest way to live on forever in paradise.

Begin planning your Bradenton Area getaway at bradentongulfislands.com.

Kim Knox Beckius

Kim Knox Beckius is Yankee's travel & branded content editor. A longtime freelance writer/photographer and Yankee contributing editor based in Connecticut, she has explored every corner of the region while writing six books on travel in the Northeast and contributing updates to New England guidebooks published by Fodor's, Frommer's, and Michelin. For more than 20 years, Kim served as New England Travel Expert for TripSavvy (formerly About.com). She is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) and is frequently called on by the media to discuss New England travel and events. She is likely the only person who has hugged both Art Garfunkel and a baby moose.

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