Atypical & Awesome “Life’s a Beach”

Autumn and I snuck away for a rare girl’s day to the beach. We are lucky to live just over an hour from the Gulf coast. However, when we arrived to our beach of choice- Grayton Beach- it was at capacity and there was no entry allowed to the parking area. We travelled onward and went through Watercolor. Beautiful man-made area that seemed to cater to a particular demographic but no easy access to the beach. So we back tracked. I thought, hey, let’s try Santa Rosa Beach. We happened upon an area I have not been- Blue Mountain Beach. We parked in a questionable spot out of sheer desperation and waddled to the public beach access. I say waddled because I was wearing my flip flops that Autumn pointed out I have literally had her whole life (she’s 22 for those keeping score). At first we thought we had made a big mistake as this beach was also packed. However, we found a patch of sand and laid out our towels and beach mats to try and get what little beach we could. Within a few minutes, things improved. Some of the crowd moved on and we had room to breathe. It was a beautiful day and we were able to get in a few hours of much needed salt air and sand pipers. We headed back a little sooner than we wanted out of fear of my car getting towed. We stopped and got fast-food shrimp on the way home as the beach always leaves us with a hankering for sea food. We’ll return in a few weeks under less harried conditions and will enjoy fresh Gulf seafood and a sunset over the water. But today was fine. And we got a gorgeous sunset over our back yard. It was a sweet day.