The Island King actually found this one while I was beating around a palmetto bush LOL 
Island Girl took over the camera and got some really good architechtural shots of the area - and then asked her dad what her "cut" will be if the pictures sell LOL Seaside is an incredible little "village" like town (it's where they filmed the movie The Truman Show) and it really does look like that. The roads are narrow cobbled streets - bicycles are the most common form of transportation - and all of the houses are gingerbread cottage cute with white picket fences. 
>
They have a pretty little church that holds a non denomination service each week. 
It has become an artist's retreat and there are art galleries, parks with incredible sculptures and funky little oddities spread throughout the community. 
It's a mega tourist destination but only a handful of people live there year round. 
The shopping district has a slight French Quarter flair 
with apartments over some of the shops and some times I wonder what it would be like to live there. Then after that moment passes I realize that I'm a private person and I would hate living in a place where my neighbors are that close and there is a constant stream of people walking past my doorstep. I would also miss having a yard so in the end the idea of living there is cool but the reality wouldn't be so great for me LOLWe wandered into a very fancy art gallery and while looking at one of the paintings the Youngest Island boy said in his loudest voice "This is the ugliest painting I've ever seen! I'm in kindergarten and can paint better than that" It would have been funny if the gallery owner weren't standing there looking like she was about to have a stroke. Ok, to be honest, that made it even funnier LOL
This was his favorite thing to do in Seaside
We hung out for a while in the town square which is a big grassy bowl with a stage down in the bottom.
There were some kids there rolling down the hill so the Youngest Island Boy wanted to give it a try. I swear I don't know what's up with that kid but he would roll for just a little and then somehow get turned around and then would roll back up the hill LOL He tried for a long time and we tried to help him but he just couldn't roll downhill. Which actually makes sense since we're a whole family of odd ducks. Eventually he gave up on the rolling idea and just ran up and down the hill.
We ran into this guy on our way back to the car. 
We were getting hungry so we drove down to Deer Lake State Park to have our lunch. I found this park geocaching last weekend and the Island King has never been there so he wanted to check it out. We had a picnic and took the boardwalk to the beach. This boardwalk is over some really incredible old sand dunes.
You don't see sand dunes and bowls (the flat space in the middle of several large sand dunes)like this anymore. When I was a kid this is what this whole area looked like. 
There were no condos or tourists, just a few local fisherman whose families had been here forever. Sigh. There is a coastal lake there as well and after the heavy rains we've had it broke through the sand to overflow into the Gulf. This was incredible, the current coming out of the lake was like a river flowing and had dug a large trench. 
There aren't a lot of coastal lakes left around here and I must say that South Walton County has done a fantastic job of preserving the lakes here. The Youngest Island Boy spent his time playing in the sand (one of his most favorite things in the world to do)
while Island Girl chased the sea gulls with the camera 
Can you tell these are my kids? An hour or so later we drove back down to Seaside to catch the sunset - which of course was spectacular.
There is a bar on the Gulf there that rings a big bell when the sun sets and the Youngest declared that he wants to hear that bell every day. It was a great sun set too. While the sun was setting the Youngest grabbed my point and shoot camera and wandered around taking pictures. He saw a man carrying a dog wearing a tierra and thought that was the coolest thing so he asked the man if he could take his picture. Unfortunately the angle is wrong and you can't really see the tierra but let me tell you it was quite something. Lots of jewels and diamonds that were probably real LOL
We really had fun and we got a lot of good stock photos to sell. We get a lot of calls from people wanting Seaside pictures and today we were really able to add to what we already have. I love fun days!