Ahoy! Gratuitous blogger beach trip recap ahead!

You can unlock your liquor cabinet because I'm back from my #Saucecation2012, y'all!  I had a super nice week living it up by laying it down in the Florida panhandle.  You better redneckonize!!

Just kidding.  I drove through the redneck areas (my favorite areas) to get to the ridonkulously touristy areas outside of Destin.  It was the most touristy spot I'd ever stayed at while visiting my neighbor state so there were a lot of people with their things and voices and more people things...  I had to wear more pants than normal like a gawddamned fancy person.

But I still kept it real.  There are definitely two types of people in the world: those that shower 48 times a day while at the beach and those that shower every 48 hours.  I am definitely one of the latter variety.  

What I'm saying is that I probably smelled like dirty ocean crotchpit and I wear a lot of head scarves when I'm near the sea.  Not the cool ones you see hipsters wearing but ones that look like bikers dropped them in the floor of a truck stop bathroom and then I found them and thought 'Hey, if I put that on my head it would distract people from my dirty hair!'

If you're wondering why I'm in truck stop bathrooms it's a long-ass motherfuckin drive to the beach, y'all.  I have to stop somewhere to pee and stock up on more Vitamin Water and Combos and head couture.

So the condo that I found was "updated" (circa 1997) but the beach was the front yard (see glorious sunset above) and every day they sat out a few beach chairs and umbrella for me.  This is ESSENTIAL to all of us human vampires that boil in the sun.  I felt super fancy with my umbrella AND pants!

But this "updated" condo didn't have HD tv and how the fuck am I supposed to watch NCIS marathons when it rains without HD??  

Well, I'll tell you what I did!  I went shopping like any normal tourist!  Thank almighty Thor for the world's largest outlet mall within a mile from my "updated" condo.

I destroyed that Banana Republic and Ann Taylor Loft like I'd never even seen one before.  They were skeptical of my do rag but the Ann Taylor Loft lady recognized that I had inadvertently wore a shirt from the regular, non-outlet Ann Taylor store and I was treated like a princess the rest of the day.

I could get used to this glamorous lifestyle.  

But I'm still not showering more.

Once I spent all my money at the Ann Taylor Loft and hit my allottment of deadly sun for the day, I figured I had to spend some time elsewhere.  So I drove down the street to Seaside.  I know people (architects) cream their panties over Seaside because it's fancy-planned by fancy architects and it is relatively fancy. 

And all quaint and shit.

There are Tolix chairs just hanging out alone and sessy in a garden.

They have a lot of food trucks and I like trucks filled with food.

I also accidentally found THE church there designed by Merrill and Pastor Architects tucked away in the corner as I was creepily taking pictures of people's houses.

Don't worry - I was hiding in the public gardens in front of the houses so no one would see me.  I have some class, obviously.

I felt all smart that I actually recognized a building when I stumbled across it.  These hundreds of hours on the internet are actually doing my brain some good!

However, I'm not as sold on Seaside as everyone else is.  Sure, there's the cute little post office:

...and The Truman Show was filmed there but also THE TRUMAN SHOW WAS FILMED THERE.  Have y'all actually seen that movie?  The idea that a town was so perfect as to be representative of the most perfect town ever is so grotesque to me as to taint the entire place.  I almost couldn't even eat my delicious food from the food trucks I was so disgusted.  And you don't see the cute stuff when you drive into town, you see this giant wall of purple fuckery:

 Welcome to Seaside, bitches.  Fancy architects built this shit! 

Maybe I'm cranky because of the overpriced food truck hot dog I just ate...

What I did like about Seaside is there was tons of free parking (next to the purple wall/'80s shopping center of shame) for the free public restrooms and access to the food trucks.  This was important because I used Seaside as a pit stop on the way to the really fancy shit down the road: Rosemary Beach.

No purple walls here, y'all!  Just lots of super sexy cobblestone streets and Spanish house porn.  Coastal Living even built their beach house in Rosemary Beach this year.  I didn't get to visit because they shut down when they heard I was coming to FL (uh... thanks Twitter)  so I wouldn't dirty up their house with my sandy trail of glitternaise all over their nice floors.

Here's the post office in Rosemary Beach.  You just got served, Seaside!!

The fountain in the courtyard of the post office because yeah.

Now granted, I passed a few 13-year-old girls around town whose flip flops probably cost more than my entire vacation and a few landscapers even looked at me like I didn't even belong but maybe it was just the do rag in my hair and pit stains.  I could have cleaned up nicer had I known.  I just spent a lot of money at the Banana Republic outlet for chrissake!

I took this picture and ran.

Farther down the street from Rosemary Beach is Alys Beach and I think angels live there.

Specifically they live here which signals drivers you're entering into beach heaven and put on your good manners.  I didn't get out of the car because I really thought they might escort me from the premises.

Because yeah.

That purple wall at Seaside is starting to feel a lot more like my style now that I think about it...

After I overstayed my welcome in fancy neighborhoods (this happens a lot...) I got to visit a building dedicated to scienze (my favorite -enze!) and designed by a Twitter friend of mine @archy_type.  I love when that happens.

The Wilson Biophilia Center is a facility focusing on teaching the importance of biodiversity, conversation and preservation of nature and shit.  I think.  I'm pretty sure biophilia is a made up scienze.  

But I happen to really like scienze centers because my senior ID treatise was a center for earth and space/discovery museum/what the fuck was I thinking?!  I was very ambitious and ignorant...

See, it wasn't all shopping and laying by the pool!  I got my smart on!

But mostly it was a lot of this:

Thanks for the super secret beach hookup, friend!

And some of this:

 A little bit of hipster beach art because I'm that person now:

Definitely some of this:

The ogling, not the actual boating...

Don't forget the watery emo shit...

And more sunsets than Instagram will allow...

See even more beach fabulosity on my Instagram tumblr.  Yeah, I have one now.

And more pictures of waves than humanity will allow.  

It was a great farewell to my 31st year of sauce and I didn't even get a sunburn!  Well, except for the small bit of underarm fat that I missed during the fourth application of SPF 70 but I think those odds are pretty good.

However I must say the best part of the trip was my adventure to a Whataburger for the first time.  It was completely forgettable except for the part where the twinkie fry guy sashayed out from behind the counter like a vintage cigarette girl with a tray of ketchup and bbq sauces just to tell me that he liked my purse.  Customer for life now!  Take note, Chick-fil-A.  He didn't say he liked my do-rag but maybe he just didn't see the sequined part.

Can't wait to prowl the free bathrooms at Seaside next year looking for an even fancier head scarf!