Where the South meets the sea

Southern Living, Spring 2003 by Lingo, Karen

One of the grandest old resort hotels along the Florida coast is The Don Ce Sar Beach Resort & Spa in St. Petersburg Beach. Another is The Breakers in Palm Beach-the epitome of old-world opulence. Yet another is the Boca Raton Resort & Club in Boca Raton, which reflects architect and founder Addison Mizner's passion for all things Spanish.

Skip up the coast to Sea Island, Georgia, and you find The Cloister. This oceanside Eden has set the standard for good taste and fine service for years. Two years ago, Sea Island opened a sister property-The Lodge at Sea Island Golf Club. It offers even more luxury than its older sister, and after a day of play or pampering, you can relax on the terrace while listening to a bagpiper play at sunset.

Golf With a Beach View Glittering like diamonds along the Southern coast, island resorts offer everything from spas to nature programs. Their pride and joys, though, are the golf courses that meander alongside the ocean, playing tag with the beaches and saltwater marshes.

Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, sports a number of resorts and fine golf courses, as well as 12 miles of beaches, miles of bicycle paths, and fabulous outlet shopping. Golf is also a mainstay at resorts such as the Jekyll Island Club Hotel on Georgia's Golden Isles, Amelia Island Plantation on Florida's eastern coast, and Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort on the Gulf coast-just to mention a few. >

South Carolina's Terrific Trio

The Palmetto State claims some of the loveliest island resorts in the South. Especially noteworthy are Fripp Island, Wild Dunes Resort, and Kiawah Island Golf Resort.

Fripp Island, near Beaufort, has everything a good resort needs-golf, beautiful beaches, and plenty of programs for the family. The beachfront homes are popular with families. Couples find the cottages at Ocean Point perfect for a romantic getaway, and birders love the Tree Houses (homes raised on pedestals) nestled among the trees and bordering the marsh.

Spread out over 1,600 acres on Isle of Palms, north of Charleston, Wild Dunes Resort offers fabulous golf with a twist of history. Legend holds that if you follow directions to the treasure tree in Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Gold-Bug," you'll end up at a large oak about halfway down the 14th fairway of the Links Course.

Kiawah Island Golf Resort, south of Charleston, is known for golf and tennis, but it's really all about nature. The Ocean Course, designed by Pete Dye and one of five golf courses at the resort, has met Audubon International's strict standards for qualification as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary. The resort also protects the endangered loggerhead sea turtle.

Take Time for Turtles

Between mid-May and mid-August, at night on many beaches of the South, you may witness one of nature's most amazing rituals. From the surf, female sea turtles rise and lumber toward the first line of dunes, where they dig nests and lay their eggs before returning to the sea. Roughly two months later, the hatchlings emerge and head for the brightest horizon, hopefully the foaming surf.

Along with Kiawah, a number of resorts and coastal communities have programs aimed at protecting the nests of sea turtles. Little St. Simons Island in Georgia and Disney's Vero Beach Resort in Florida are two. The area around New Smyrna Beach, including Canaveral National Seashore, is a prime nesting ground, and one of the most intense programs in Florida takes place at the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, between Melbourne and Vero Beach. It was designated America's first sea turtle refuge by Congress in 1989.