Beach Happy

Kelpful founder Melissa Hanson at Estero Bluffs. Photo: Kelpful.

West Coast Wine Trip: Foraging and Sipping the SLO Coast

California's newest AVA sits within six miles of the Pacific. Between tastings: seaweed foraging at Estero Bluffs, goats at Stepladder Creamery, and olallieberry pie in Cambria.

Projected art on the white walls of Alys Beach at night

Digital Graffiti: When Alys Beach Becomes the Canvas

One weekend a year, the whitewashed walls and rooftops of Alys Beach are handed over to digital artists from around the world.

Hank Jr. and two of his friends. Credit: Hank's Hair of the Dog Saloon.

Advice from a Conch: Six Stand-Out Bars in Key West

Skip Duval Street's greatest hits. A ten-year local names the dog-friendly saloon, the cabaret in an old B&B, the $7 Martini Monday, and the espresso martini...

A Holland America ship in Glacier Bay, Alaska

Alaskan Adventure: Seven Days at Sea with My Mom

A helicopter onto Mendenhall Glacier, congee at the Lido buffet, and 7 a.m. at the world's first Starbucks — a travel writer finally takes her mother...

Ryan Thibodaux with his trumpet in New Orleans

Cheating Death: From Tragedy to Triumph

Lymphoma, then COVID, then a one-ton bull in a Spanish street. Three near-death experiences in as many years, and a dentist who came out the other...

Fly fishing a trout stream near Blue Ridge, Georgia

To the Hills: A 30A Regular's Guide to Blue Ridge, Georgia

Population 1,290, 100 miles of trout streams, and a bamboo rod maker with a years-long waitlist — where Gulf Coast locals go when the beach fills...

Moonlight on the Gulf under a field of stars

Wild — Circa 1491

A photographer closes her eyes on a 30A dune and opens them 532 years earlier — sea oats, purple lupine, great-horned owls, and a shoreline still...

Meredith Wild seated by the fireplace in her book-lined living room

Wild Tales: Best-Selling Author Meredith Wild

A seven-million-dollar book deal, a #1 New York Times bestseller, six cats, and a dream house on the Gulf. The romance novelist on power dynamics, Jane...

Dave King seated on a blue tufted sofa beneath a large artwork inside SOWAL House

The Art House by the Beach: Dave King and SOWAL House

Friends bought him a semester of college. A buried bottle of bourbon in Central Park introduced him to his wife. Now Dave King runs an art...

A black bear cub in the Florida woods, overlaid in double exposure with palmetto fronds

The Paper Bear: A Bear's-Eye View of Northwest Florida

The Florida Panhandle holds 57 of the state's 80 ecosystems and more than 100 species of special concern. Two filmmakers spent years in its swamps and...

A long wooden dock stretching over the clear turquoise shallows of the Abacos

Beaches Abroad: The Abacos, Bahamas

A 120-mile chain of cays where you can walk a dock and be the only one on it. Conch every way it comes, the original Goombay...

Scott Lassiter, DJ 30A, holding a fan of vinyl records on a bench

Marine Life: A Veteran Marches to a New Beat

From a town of 54 people to six years in the Marines to a #1 remix. How Scott Lassiter became DJ 30A — and why a...

Cristina Zenato face to face with a Caribbean reef shark on the sea floor

Diving Deep with Explorer and Conservationist Cristina Zenato

Twenty thousand dives, six languages, two uncharted caves, and a nation's waters turned into a shark sanctuary. The woman sharks line up to have fishing hooks...

A painting of a J-boat sailing off Newport past a rocky shoreline

Sea Views: Fresh Strokes on a Timeless Genre

The skills to paint a Hudson River landscape nearly vanished, kept alive by a handful of artists working in obscurity. Painter Tony Winters on depth, drawing,...