Florida Gulf Coast Sunsets: Pretty Enough to Tolerate Bradenton

Florida has seasons.

They just aren’t the traditional spring, summer, fall and winter everyone else learned about in elementary school.

We have Hot, Hotter, Hurricane, and Snowbird.

And around Sarasota, you know Snowbird Season has officially arrived because the leaves don’t change colors.

The license plates do.

Sometime around November, the roads suddenly bloom with Michigan blue, New York yellow, Pennsylvania white, Ontario everything, and approximately every other license plate from a place where February requires owning an ice scraper.

That’s when you know winter is coming.

Not ours. Theirs.

They arrive by the thousands, bringing golf clubs, sensible footwear and an apparently universal agreement that 37 mph is perfectly acceptable in the left lane.

Welcome to Florida’s Gulf Coast.

The traffic is fucked.

The parking is nonexistent.

Everyone is 74.

And the sunsets are absolutely spectacular.

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DESTINATION: FLORIDA GULF COAST

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SARASOTA: GOD’S WAITING ROOM WITH REALLY NICE BEACHES

Sarasota is objectively beautiful.

The city has palm trees, waterfront condos, expensive restaurants, manicured neighborhoods and some of the prettiest beaches in Florida.

It also has enough retirees to make you wonder whether Medicare offers group rates.

During the summer, things are relatively manageable.

Then November arrives.

The temperatures drop up north, retirees instinctively sense danger, and an enormous migration begins toward Southwest Florida.

Suddenly every restaurant has a 45-minute wait at 4:07 PM.

Publix becomes a contact sport.

And somewhere on Tamiami Trail, you’re trapped behind a Buick doing 31 mph with its left turn signal blinking continuously despite absolutely no evidence that a left turn is forthcoming.

Eventually April arrives and they migrate north again.

Nature is beautiful.

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BRADENTON: SAME SUNSET, DIFFERENT ENERGY

Just north of Sarasota is Bradenton.

Sarasota feels like somebody built an entire city around retirement accounts and pickleball.

Bradenton feels like somebody built one around a pawn shop, a vape store and a guy named Kyle who absolutely knows where you can get a catalytic converter after midnight.

It’s a different vibe.

And yet, head west toward Anna Maria Island and something remarkable happens.

Bradenton disappears.

The strip malls give way to palm trees.

The water turns turquoise.

The sand becomes ridiculously white.

And suddenly you’re standing on one of the prettiest stretches of coastline in Florida wondering how the hell that was hiding behind that.

Florida does this constantly.

The state can give you an abandoned attempt at building the world’s largest airport in the middle of a swamp at the Everglades Jetport and then, a few hours away, casually produce beaches that look like somebody stole them from a Caribbean tourism commercial.

Consistency has never really been our thing.

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JUST DRIVE WEST UNTIL YOU HIT WATER

The great thing about watching a sunset around Sarasota is that you don’t need some secret viewpoint.

There isn’t one magical beach where the sun performs better.

Siesta Key.

Lido Key.

Longboat Key.

Anna Maria Island.

Bradenton Beach.

Coquina Beach.

Bean Point.

Pick one.

The Gulf of Mexico provides a nearly uninterrupted western horizon, which means the basic sunset-viewing strategy is remarkably difficult to fuck up.

Drive west until the road stops.

Get out.

Find sand.

Wait.

That’s pretty much it.

At least geographically.

Traffic is another matter entirely.

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THE BRIDGE IS WHERE YOUR OPTIMISM GOES TO DIE

If you’re visiting between November and spring break, there’s one tiny complication.

Everyone else wants to go to the beach too.

The barrier islands are connected to the mainland by bridges, creating convenient little vehicular choke points where thousands of people can simultaneously reconsider their afternoon plans.

At 2:00 PM, Google Maps might tell you the beach is 23 minutes away.

That’s adorable.

By 4:00 PM, the roads leading toward Siesta Key, Lido Key and Anna Maria Island can transform into enormous parking lots filled with rental cars, SUVs and snowbirds slowly migrating west at approximately the speed of plate tectonics.

You sit.

You move six feet.

You sit again.

Eventually you begin studying the people in neighboring cars.

You learn things about them.

You grow together.

Children are born.

Civilizations rise and fall.

Then the light turns green.

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CONGRATULATIONS. NOW FIND PARKING.

Making it across the bridge isn’t victory.

It’s merely Phase Two.

Now you need somewhere to put the car.

During peak season, beach parking becomes Florida’s version of The Hunger Games.

You circle.

And circle.

And circle again.

Eventually you start watching pedestrians.

Someone carrying beach chairs toward the parking lot?

Target acquired.

You slowly follow them in your car while trying not to look like you’re about to abduct an entire family.

They reach a Honda.

Excellent.

They open the trunk.

Holy shit.

They’re leaving.

You stop.

Turn signal on.

Claim established.

Then another car approaches from the opposite direction.

Now things are getting serious.

Because you’ve spent 37 minutes looking for this parking space and you’re prepared to defend it under maritime law if necessary.

This is why you don’t arrive 30 minutes before sunset during February and expect everything to work out.

Get there early.

Spend the afternoon at the beach.

Bring a chair.

Bring something cold.

Let everyone else fight over the asphalt.

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THEN FLORIDA STARTS SHOWING OFF

Eventually the sun begins dropping toward the Gulf.

And this is where Florida shuts everyone up.

The light gets warmer.

The water starts reflecting gold.

Clouds that spent the entire afternoon looking completely useless suddenly turn orange, red and pink.

Pelicans fly across the horizon.

Boats become silhouettes.

And that giant glowing ball starts sinking toward what appears to be the edge of the Gulf of Mexico.

For a few minutes, almost everyone stops.

The retirees stop discussing property taxes.

The tourists stop looking for parking.

The kids stop complaining.

Even Kyle from Bradenton has probably put down the catalytic converter.

Everyone just watches.

And holy shit, it’s beautiful.

I’ve traveled all over the world and seen some spectacular landscapes, but there’s something about Florida’s Gulf Coast that delivers this ridiculously consistently.

You don’t need mountains.

You don’t need a famous landmark.

You don’t need tickets.

You don’t need a guide.

You don’t need to hike six miles uphill carrying $8,000 worth of camera equipment.

You just sit on the beach and wait for Earth to rotate.

Nature handles everything else.

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DON’T LEAVE WHEN THE SUN DISAPPEARS

Here’s where approximately half the beach screws up.

The instant the sun drops below the horizon, people start packing.

Chairs collapse.

Coolers close.

Everyone begins marching toward the parking lot simultaneously because apparently spending an hour trapped in traffic getting onto the island wasn’t enough.

Let them go.

Seriously.

The show isn’t necessarily over.

Some of the best colors can happen after the sun disappears, especially when there are clouds hanging over the Gulf.

The remaining light catches underneath them and suddenly the entire sky can turn deep orange, pink, red or purple.

Sometimes it’s subtle.

Sometimes it looks like someone in charge of Photoshop discovered the saturation slider.

Either way, give it another 15 or 20 minutes.

Worst case, you watched the ocean for a little longer.

Best case, you get the photograph everyone currently sitting in traffic missed.

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FLORIDA IS VERY GOOD AT PRETTY THINGS AND TERRIBLE AT EVERYTHING SURROUNDING THEM

That’s essentially the Gulf Coast experience.

The beaches are beautiful.

The water is warm.

The sunsets are phenomenal.

Getting there between November and April may require the patience of a Buddhist monk.

Florida has always been a bizarre combination of spectacular natural beauty and human beings determined to make accessing it unnecessarily difficult.

Drive south and you can find the abandoned Everglades Jetport, a gigantic monument to the time Florida decided building a massive airport in the middle of one of the world’s most important wetlands sounded reasonable.

Keep exploring the Everglades and you’ll find much darker history at the ValuJet Flight 592 Memorial.

Then drive back toward the Gulf, find a beach and Florida acts like none of that happened.

Palm trees.

White sand.

Turquoise water.

Perfect sunset.

See? Pretty.

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FLORIDA’S DAILY APOLOGY

Florida deserves plenty of shit.

The humidity is offensive.

The mosquitoes have landing lights.

Alligators occasionally appear in places where alligators should absolutely not be.

Half the state is under construction.

The other half is stuck behind someone from Ohio.

Sarasota is slowly becoming one enormous retirement community.

Bradenton remains Bradenton.

But every evening, the Gulf Coast gets one chance to apologize for all of it.

The sun drops.

The Gulf turns gold.

The sky catches fire.

And for a few minutes, Florida makes perfect sense.

Then you pack up your shit, walk back to the car and spend 45 minutes trying to get across the bridge.

Apology accepted.