Myrtle Beach ♥ — The City Dweller

A few weeks ago, my honey and I went to North Myrtle Beach for my birthday. (Shouts out to us August babies!) Keen for a little sand, surf, and sun, we piled ourselves into the car at the crack of dawn on Friday, bound for South Carolina.

Myrtle Beach has been a special place for M since college, and I really appreciate that he brought me to the place that he holds dear.

As soon as we made it to our resort, I fell in love with it, too.

With the summer season winding down, the beach was sparse save for us stalwart beachcombers, and we lazed about for three days, reveling in the hot sun and refreshing breezes, splashing in the ocean, eating all the food in sight, and catching up on sleeeeep!

(I can't be the only one who looks forward to sinking into those plush hotel beds and waking up renewed, amiright?!)

We had a blast.

And that ^^ was about the only serious picture we took together. Everything else was utter silliness. (And that's the way I like it, to tell the truth.)

First things first, I gave myself a special manicure for this beach trip:

Having spied a nail art few tutorials online, I gave it a go and came up with a "deep blue sea" type of gradient manicure. The white surf actually fades into a sandy color at the tips of my nails (to make the beach!), but that part is a little harder to see.

Which is fine by me. This mani's most important job was to look cute while I held a frosty beer, so mission accomplished!

The ocean felt glorious.

Just the right temperature, with silty smooth sand underneath that melted any lingering stress away and made me feel giddy and playful.

We dunked ourselves in and out of the water for hours as the sun set, soaking in waves of happiness.

The next morning, the sun wasn't the only thing decorating the skies!

We decided to go parasailing, and after a truly treacherous banana boat ride led by a jet ski (I seriously thought that ride might be the end of me!), we lifted off into the clouds above a beautiful teal ocean.

Up, up, and away!

The view from above was sensational. The captain on our boat had a camera, but I didn't bring one in the sky with me. Next time! Perhaps the views from my recent hot air balloon experience are enough? :-)

Hopefully so! Cuz that's all I got.

We spent the rest of the trip in full vacation mode, so we didn't take many more pics. But North Myrtle Beach definitely gave us a warm welcome, from the food to the waterfront to the sunset views.

We'll be back!