Fifty-some years ago when I was a kid, my parents rented modest little homes on or near the Jersey shore for a one- or two-week vacation every summer.

Twenty-some years ago when I was the mother of little boys, my husband and I rented houses on the Florida coast and we always looked for one with a porch and a deck as close to the dunes and the waves as possible.

That seems impossible today. Where have all those houses and their owners gone? The 16th floor of a condominium high rise?

Wondering how such an experience could compare with our happy rental house history, G. W. and I checked into the Majestic Beach Towers in Panama City Beach in July — not one high rise building, but two! The next door neighbors to the north and the south for quite a stretch are high risers too.

In fact, we drove the 17 miles of Front Beach Road, also known as Alternate State Highway 98, and counted at least three dozen tall properties in various stages of refurbishing or new construction.

We did find a few low-rise motels and some rental houses to the west as we hunted up Dan Russell Pier Park, 93 acres across Front Beach Road from City Pier, for a look at this public-private venture evolving into shops, restaurants and family entertainment venues including a 16-screen movie theater.

The personable young fellow tending umbrellas to help vacationers catch the shade in front of my condo building said his mother and stepfather liked going to Pier Park for music on Thursday nights in the summer, but he thought the tunes more suited to their generation than his. Said he thought I might like it.

Guess my new bathing suit didn’t change my age.

With 47 new properties being developed or refurbished, Panama City Beach Convention and Visitor Bureau president and CEO Bob Warren forecasts 38,000 rooms will be ready by the beginning of 2008, 60 percent of them condominiums.

That’s a different world in our lifetime. I try to have an open mind, to always be appreciative, but I was curious checking in to Majestic Beach Towers.

I liked my little girl memories of the small house at Vision Beach, not too far from Point Pleasant, N.J., with its wooden boardwalk, and I liked the times we had with the children and grandchildren in cozy houses on Florida’s Ponte Vedra beaches.

Why would I want to ride an elevator or climb a dozen or more flights of stairs when I wanted to go to the beach?

To try to get my head straight for the inevitable since beach buildings are rising higher, I hunted up some information on the popularity of such vacation rentals.

With one, two, three or more bedrooms, these vacation condos work for families or groups of friends of any size. Eat out when you want to deal with crowds or eat in when that’s easier or more suited to your diet.

Clean up after yourself, or pay a bit extra for maid service, which is not normally included in a condo rental.

Stay as long — or as short a time — as you like; today’s vacation rentals are not timeshares so you’re not forced to stay a full week. And don’t fear you’ll put up with a sales presentation to get a good price. That’s not what rentals today are all about, said Rick Fisher, vice president of Specialty Lodging for hotels.com.

“Vacation rentals today need to match what the traveler wants: flexibility to stay only the number of nights which suit their needs. The old days of the buy-in are not today’s trend,” Fisher said.

“They also need to make it easy for the would-be vacationer to find a place. Remember when you had to talk to real estate agents to figure out which homeowners might be leasing their place for a week so you could go to the beach?”

“Today you can research lots of options efficiently on the Web,” Fisher said.

G. W. and I found the new Majestic Beach Towers at Panama City Beach, on Front Beach Drive, and we stayed three nights. With 27 miles of white sand on the Gulf of Mexico and St. Andrews Bay, this seems like a beach for a long vacation.

He liked our 12th-floor setup with big picture windows and a balcony overlooking all the action at the beach below … but he rarely walks the beach or swims anyway.

I’d rather step out the back door to be into the sand instead of ride an elevator, but stepping into sparkling clean accommodations as opposed to some of the musty, not-so-scrubbed rental houses of years past was a good trade-off.

Stories are legend for everyone who ever rented a beach house (What, no frying pan? Where’s the corkscrew? I never knew I needed to bring sheets.)

The vacation rental condos, villas and bed and breakfast inns seem to come with everything, based more on a well-researched formula than individual homeowner quirks, and that’s a good thing.

Majestic Beach Towers even provided easy access to food so we left the car in the parking garage (high rise too) and ate on the patio of the casual shore side restaurant or got takeout from the little deli with eggs cooked to order, pastries requiring another hike in the sand, fresh salads and sandwiches and big lattes.

I checked out the pool at the nearby Edgewater Beach Resort and liked it more than mine, especially the infinity pool which lets you believe you’re safely and calmly actually floating in the ocean while you’re really lounging close to the condo.

However, my condo complex had a spa with a skilled masseuse and not-too-crazy hotel prices, and I don’t think the Edgewater does.