Vacation - day 2 & 3

Sitting in our room (308) at the Holiday Inn at the Pavilion in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Jane is napping and I just had a shower and a shave - after sitting on the beach the entire day. This is the view from our balcony, over the pool and to the Atlantic Ocean (click the pics to enlarge them). It is Tuesday, June 8.

We left Charleston, WV Monday morning around 8:17 and wound over and through the hills and trees, into Virginia, then North Carolina, and finally found our way into South Carolina. The roads were all really good, but I don't much care for hills and corners and stuff. We took I-77 for a long way, then got off on a bunch of different other roads: I-74 and I-73 and Rt. 220, then Rt. 38, then Rt. 501. There may have been some other ones in there somewhere, but 501 brought us into Myrtle Beach.

You see the first 'Myrtle Beach Welcome Center' about 50 miles away. You think it's just down the road and it seemed we kept going and going and going. We arrived with quite a bit of other traffic at 4 pm Monday. We drove right downtown, to the ocean, and hung a right on 9th Avenue, then a quick left on North Ocean Blvd. Our hotel was right there (1200 N. Ocean Blvd) and we swung into the 15-minute registration parking. At left is a pic of the front of our hotel. After finding our way in, and unloading our stuff (it took us two trips with one of the big carts - we brought enough stuff for a family of 8) we finally got settled into our room. We were both a little frazzled from the traffic, and being in the car all day, and finding out our hotel is right in the center of all the action downtown. Finally we ventured out and found a teeny little New York Style Pizza place and had a slice for supper.

Later on we walked along the boardwalk that separates our hotel (and a million others) from the beach. There are all kinds of shops and restaurants and things along the boardwalk just to the south of this pic from our balcony. Then they had some amateur talent set up on a stage at one place. We sat there until the teen band drove us away. It was a group from a music school, and they weren't really bad, other than the girl singer. Bless her heart, she tried like the dickens, but she just couldn't sing on key. Anyway, we finally went back to our room and called it a night about 10 pm. We were beat.

All told I think Myrtle Beach is about 750 miles from home and took around 13 1/2 hours via the route we took.

DAY 3
Tuesday morning we woke up about 7:30 and went out on our balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It was a nice morning, and we must have been facing South just enough that the sun wasn't in our faces. We went down and got some food from the continental breakfast, then after eating we decided to hit the beach. We rented an umbrella and chairs for $30 for the day, and basically we just vegged out the entire day. We sat and watched the waves, read a little, got in the water off and on, walked up and down the beach now and then; we ate lunch at Marvin's at noon (hamburger and fries), and went back to the beach until 3:30.

We are thinking about taking a drive to see if we can find a grocery store, then we'll probably try to find a different place to eat supper, and eventually we'll make our way back to the stage area that is just down from us. Tonight there is more free entertainment and supposedly fireworks.

So far it's been a pretty nice trip. Very relaxing, yet there is plenty of stuff to do within walking distance. There are a couple of pools and a lazy river that our balcony overlooks, but it seems to be dominated by little kids. Really, just laying in bed looking out the sliding glass door at the ocean is worth the trip.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and windy, but Thursday and Friday are supposed to hold scattered thunderstorms. We'll see what happens.