Beach 2011

My parents sent me to the beach for a week as my college graduation present. Of course I took Dylan with me :) We packed up and headed out of town last Friday, July 22nd around midnight. Dylan was such a trooper and drove all through the night. I slept for the first 3 hours, then napped on and off for the rest of the trip. He is such a safe driver, so I wasn't worried at all.
3:30pm on Friday afternoon we arrived at Santa Rosa Beach, Florida!
First thing we did was run to the beach and put our feet in the water! Oh it was bliss…

We stayed in a little studio condo in Gulf Place. It was on the 4th floor above a restaurant and wine bar. We loved it. It was perfect for our stay! Here are some pictures… I took them as we were packing up to leave, so everything is a little messy… excuse that part :)
{bathroom was spacious and that was nice!}

{Bedroom}


{Living room}

{Kitchenette, which was so small… but we didn't really cook that much so it was ok… except I burned my finger pretty bad because of the lack of space}

We spent most of our time at the beach… laying out on a blanket and swimming in the ocean! It was JUST what I wanted!






Dylan bought this boogie board while we were there, and made a point to pick out the most ridiculous one… he looked extra cool on the beach and it cracked me up.


When we left, he had to depart with the ipod wearing dolphin boogie board… so he left it downstairs by the elevator in our condo. He wanted to put a sign on it that said, "Free to good home" but we didn't have a pen or paper :( He's such a stinker.

One of Dylan's favorite things to do was go down to the beach at night and hunt for crabs… which scared me. The first night we did it, I saw the first crab and declared I wasn't a fan… but it was still kind of fun! Again, he made me laugh and brought these headlamps for us to wear :)



We ate out almost every night, which was pretty much the highlight of our days. We love to eat out, and we LOVE seafood!







Dylan did try and get me to eat those raw oysters on the half shell… but I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. Yuck.

We cooked a little bit too… Omelets in the morning (made by yours truly) and fish, saffron rice, broccoli and sauteed mushrooms for dinner one night. We're REALLY good cooks!





When we did eat at the condo, we'd usually sit out on our teeny tiny balcony… something we'll always remember, I hope! It was so fun.



On Wednesday night, we went night fishing with a fisherman named Tom. He took us out in the bay on his tiny little boat (which scared the heck out of me) We had a slow start to the 4 hours we spent on the boat, not catching much. But we anchored up beside a boat dock that had a fishing light under the water that attracts the fish, and caught a lot. I caught a salt water catfish, a red fish and a few speckled trout. Dylan only caught speckled trout, but all of his were big enough to keep, and mine weren't :( We only ended up taking home 3 fish, which is good. Dylan was REALLY looking forward to this trip, and to my surprise is was really fun and I enjoyed it a lot! Unfortunately, we didn't get a single picture of that night because we were too busy fishing :) But we did get a picture of the poor little fish we caught! The next day we found a guy at the dock to "clean" the fish for us so we could take the meat home. Not a fan of watching that take place as you can imagine… :-p

On the days that it rained we entertained ourselves by doing some outlet mall shopping. I got some good deals at Gap and Dylan bought some new swim trunks and a few other things. The mall was HUGE. We were so tired when we got back. Another rainy day, we drove to the Egland Air Force base which was about an hour away from our condo. It was really cool to see the commissary, and the BX. The Air Force base that Dylan works at in Fort Smith isn't big enough to have those things, so it was cool for him to show me around. No pictures of that day either, too busy having fun!

The Bass Pro Shop in Destin (we went THREE times while we were there… Way too much for this girl, but Dylan sure was in heaven :) had this shark outside that we HAD to get a picture in front of. Pretty neat, huh?












We had a great, relaxing time. Which is JUST what I needed after 5 years of hard college work. So glad Dylan was able to go with me, too! It was the best graduation present, ever!