Myrtle Beach

Last weekend, we were gone to Myrtle Beach, and we had a blast.  We were originally supposed to be in upstate New York for Annalisa's wedding, but they have postponed it until next year because of COVID, so since we had the time off and the flight credit, we thought we'd go somewhere new to all of us.  We landed on Myrtle Beach in part because it was the best value for our flight credit, and in part because it would give Evie and Seth their first trip to South Carolina, and because everyone talks about Myrtle Beach.  We decided it was going to be a very touristy kind of trip rather than try to do a lot of exploring of South Carolina or focusing on history or national parks.

Our flight left at 7 am Saturday, Oct 10, so we had planned to leave the house at 5:15 and take only carry on bags.  When I got up at 4:30, I heard the TV on in the living room, and there was Evie, all dressed, with her purse and shoes on even, ready to go.  She said she had woken up at 12:45 am and couldn't get back to sleep so she came out at 2 am and watched TV until we woke up.  I was afraid that was going to make for a day of grumpiness, but she was such a good traveler.  We had a layover in Charlotte where we got some lunch and entertained ourselves for 3 hours with playing I spy and doing word puzzles.  

Our first flight together since Nov 2019

Evie brought her stuffed animal Myth (a little wolf) along.  She was showing Myth the view, but you can see she is holding her right hand up to shield Myth's eyes from the sun.

We landed in Myrtle Beach about 2 pm, got our rental car, and headed towards the strip.  Seth had gotten a free scavenger hunt activity through work that said to report to a particular address on Ocean Blvd, but the shop there had no idea what we were talking about, so we gave up on scavenger hunting and headed to the Skywheel which is basically a big ferris wheel with enclosed cars.

View from under the Skywheel

View from the top

After that we got a meal at Landshark where we were hoping for some really delicious seafood.  It was a decent meal, but didn't quite deliver.  Then we got checked in to our hotel, the Dayton House Resort, and headed to the pool.  Of course, it being October, it was a little chilly for me and Seth, but that's never stopped Evie from getting in the water, so she enjoyed splashing around with some other kids who were in the pool.  Then we headed to the beach to watch the sunset and we saw some dolphins splashing around.

Balcony view from room 321 in the North building

I have to insert this collage of pictures of Evie and Seth on the beach.  We started beach pictures in 2013 and have tried to keep it up often ever since, but we've neglected it since 2018...

Top row, left to right: May 2013 (Oregon), Jul 2014 (Oregon), Aug 2015 (Oregon)

Bottom row, left to right: May 2017 (Oregon), October 2018 (California), October 2021 (South Carolina)

After beach time, we headed up to the room, ordered pizza, watched Monsters Inc on TV and had an early night since Evie had been up for 20 hours at that point.

We slept until about 8 am and then we walked over to the building where they served breakfast, which was quite delicious.  Then we headed out for a day of tourist trapery.  We started at Ripley's Aquarium where Evie was enthralled with the penguins.

They had a tunnel where you can crawl unto the exhibit and pop your head up in the middle of the penguins.

Playing in the sand

Wandering through the shark tunnel

Hanging with the jellies

Petting sting rays

Then we headed to this place called WonderWorks which had a bunch of amusements operating under the guise of science.  A wind tunnel to simulate hurricanes, pulley systems to pull yourself up, 5D movies, etc.

The building is upside down.

Upside down lobby

Pulley system

Lying on a bed of nails

Launching into outer space

Next stop was "Peaches Corner", a restaurant that's been there since 1937, and it looks like that was the last time they cleaned anything in there too... but we enjoyed hot dogs and ice cream before heading to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium.

Sitting at the counter at Peaches

Lucy's hair dye recipe and a lock of her hair

Hoverboarding like Michael J Fox in "Back to the Future"

World's Tallest Man

Evie really enjoyed the Odditorium, more than I had thought she would.  We had a little time to kill before our reservation for dinner so we walked down the boardwalk a bit.  Evie got Dragon's Breath which she had wanted to try when we saw it at the Opry Mills Mall in Nashville.  It's basically a cereal puff ball that's been put in liquid nitrogen.  It's not cold enough to harm you, but if you keep your mouth open while you chew it, the cold smoke comes out of your mouth.

Then we headed to Medieval Times.  I've never been to a Medieval Times show before, but Seth had, and he assured me it would be a good time.  I was pretty skeptical, but I had a blast.  The actors come out to greet you and set the mood, then you walk in and get assigned to the color of knight you're going to be cheering for.  There's opportunity to buy swords and such, which we declined, and then we were seated in our knight's section.  We cheered for the Green Knight, who didn't win.  We enjoyed all the horses and their tricks, eating chicken with our hands, and being involved in the show.  

We headed back to the hotel and Evie swam in the pool while Seth and I enjoyed the hot tub.

Monday we were all up early so we sat on the balcony and watched the sun rise.  We had breakfast at the hotel and then headed to the beach.  We talked about how different the sand and water was there vs. in Destin.  The sand is much more shell-y and stays where you put it, so we started out building a sand castle, but then the waves came up and washed it away.  Evie decided to make a moat, so we started digging and then we just kept on digging until we got to the water table.  We made a hole big enough to sit in and the water would fill in the hole.  We had a really good time playing in the sand.  Then we went to the lazy river at the hotel and just floated for a bit.

At 10 we went to the escape room Seth booked for us.  It was Scooby Doo themed and we escaped with 13 minutes to spare.  It was really cute and Evie was a big contributor to solving the puzzles.

Evie started feeling poorly after we left the escape room.  Her allergies were bothering her, so we stopped at Piggly Wiggly and got her some ibuprofen for her headache and some allergy meds.  Then we had lunch at Sea Captain's House which had an amazing crab soup and everything else was a little disappointing.  We had hoped for delicious seafood in Myrtle Beach, but we were disappointed both times.  Oh well....

At least Evie  got to enjoy a coloring page.  It's been a long time since she's had one of those.

After lunch we went to the wax museum which also had a mirror maze.

Dracula, fitting since our movie theme for October is vampires

We went to play mini golf - there were dozens of places to choose from, and we settled on Captain Hook's.

Then we went back to the boardwalk for funnel cake.  Evie'd never had funnel cake before, and she very much enjoyed it.

We went back to the hotel for a little nap, I took Evie to the pool while Seth finished his nap, and then we went to Luigi's for dinner which was the best meal we had on the trip.

Tuesday was our last day, so we decided to hit up one of the pancake houses we'd seen.  We had a very good experience at Olympic Flame.

With a few hours left to kill before our flight, we went to the Alligator Adventure where we saw hundreds of alligators.

Then it was back home on two uneventful flights.

Unfortunately while we were gone, Beau fractured his leg.  Our sitter isn't sure exactly what happened and there's no way to know.  He was outside with the other dogs, so it could have been Siouxsie ran into him hard, or maybe he got himself stuck under the deck like he's been doing, or maybe a branch fell on him because several of them are down in our yard now.  But he had to have surgery Thursday and will have pins in his leg for 6-8 weeks and has to be crate confined.  That's pretty hard for a puppy, but they have given him sedatives and pain killers so I'm sure we'll get through okay.

Evie had spent the night with Granna and Granndaddy Thursday, so Beau was home from surgery Friday morning when Grannadaddy dropped her off.  She sat next to his crate while I explained what was going on with his leg and the pins and bandages and all and told her she could help me with his physical therapy and icing his leg.  I went out to talk to Grannadaddy for a minute and when I came back in, Evie was sobbing by Beau's crate.  She said, "I don't think I can do this."  I thought she meant helping with him and I said, "You don't have to do anything for him if you don't want to."  She said, "No, I mean, I don't know if I can deal with this.  He's so little and I'm afraid he's in pain."  I told her he had medicine and was going to be okay.  She took a minute to compose herself and she came back and started feeding him.  He wagged his tail at her and that made her feel better.  We got him out of his crate and did his therapy and Evie scratched his head while I put ice on his leg.  She has been more at ease since then.  She wants to be a vet when she grows up, so she's getting plenty of practice taking care of our  dogs.