We had a very nice 4 bedroom 3 bathroom house that sat on the bay and was about 2 blocks from the beach.
We left at 4 AM last Saturday and it took us 12 HOURS to get there. We left at 4 AM and ran into lots of traffic and a serious accident on I-95. In comparison, it took about 8 1/2 hours to get home.
Going down we traveled in a caravan with my sister-in-law and another family. We stopped 3 separate times for bathroom breaks, food breaks and gas. On the way home we only stopped once when we needed gas and got some food and ate it in the car once we got back on I-95.
Much better.
Some random thoughts about South and North Carolina.......
-It's very hot.
-There are lots of tobacco fields.
-Lots of folks live in trailers.
-Lots of folks live in very nice houses.
-The folks that live in the trailers sometimes live right next to the folks the have the uber expensive houses.
-It's extremely humid and hot.
-Lots of the folks that live in trailers drive very expensive cars. They also almost always have at least one and usually two satellite dishes.
-There are quite a few dirt roads in South and North Carolina.
-I might have mentioned this.......I know a lot of this has to do with going to the South in the middle of summer but damn, it was hot. The humidity had to have been near 95% along with temps in the upper 80's and 90's made it killer by 10 in the morning. If I didn't have a ride in by 10 AM.......I bagged it for the day. I work in a bakery but the weather conditions were totally oppressive even for me. I'm not sure life would be possible without air conditioning.
-Where we stayed in Cherry Grove (above North Myrtle Beach) and they allow people to use golf carts on the streets to get around. The damn things are everywhere. People drive them on the sidewalks, on the roads and just about everywhere. I'm amazed I didn't see any golf carts involved in accidents.
-If you take bikes on vacation and use a rear mounted bike rack, spend the money for a good one. I had "0" problems with my Yakima rack.
-Folks that are on vacation tend not to pay attention to where they are walking. I very nearly creamed 2 young kids walking back to their hotel from the beach. We were returning from the supermarket one afternoon and these two kids nearly ended up on the hood of my minivan, they walked out into the street right in front of me.
I was only going 20-25 mph and had slowed down to 5 mph by the time I very nearly hit them, but it still woulda hurt. I'm sure it was the highlight of their day. I got to see the "Oh shit" face a 12 year old makes when he's fairly certain he's about to die. Not a good thing.
A typical day went like this.............
Wake up at 4 AM
Read some.
Wake up my wife at 6 AM so we could walk on the beach.
Go for a ride to get newspapers.
Eat some breakfast.
Get in the hot tub with our son.
Go to the beach and stand in water up to my neck. By the way. the water in Myrtle Beach is nice. Their ain't no way in hell I'll ever go back to a New Jersey beach to stand in cold murky sewage water again.
It's totally worth the drive.
We would try to be done with the beach by 11 or 12, it was just too darn hot to stay down there much longer. We would go back in the evenings after it cooled down......
After the beach........my favorite part of the day-nap time. Nothing says "recovery" like a 3 or 4 hour nap. I also ate a LOT of ice cream. I shoulda lost weight last week with all the riding and what-not but I'm pretty sure I stayed the same. Screw it, I'm on vacation.
We didn't do a whole bunch in the evenings, although we did go to Barefoot Landing and ate at a very warm Japanese restaurant Thursday night. It was really neat to have dinner made right in front of us, but the place needed to spend some money on more air conditioning. It was cooler outside then it was inside.
I did get a T-shirt and cap from Berts Surf Shop. Very cool place with a great selection of beach bum stuff. I coulda spent a couple hours there. I love surf shops.
They have the coolest grocery store in North Myrtle Beach...........Boulineau's. The store has got food, sporting goods, a place to eat, beer, wine, you name it-it's a way cool store.
In my opinion, North Myrtle Beach and Myrtle Beach are not very cycle friendly. I rode about 20 to 25 miles a day but there is way too much traffic and the traffic consists of folks that don't know where they are and they are on a cellphone telling someone they don't know where they are.
Made me kinda nervous.
So as a result, I stuck to the side streets for the most part. The only bad thing that happened to me was I nailed a cut out section of road and pinch flatted and probably ruined my rear rim. It's still ridable but I blipped it pretty good.
Next year I'm buying a 59 dollar Wal-Mart bike for vacation and I'm going to ride it on the beach. I saw some folks riding right at the waterline and it looked like fun.
I though I'd miss the internet but I didn't miss it one bit. I have something like 500 articles in my newsreader to catch up on, I'll more then likely delete most of them.
I promised I would put my niece Mary Beth's photo in my blog........here it is.
I'm fairly sure she wanted to kill me for taking this shot.
Here's the rest of the photos I took. You'll notice lots of sunride and sunset pictures. What can I say-I like taking random pictures of stuff. The 25 bucks I spend a year on a Flickr pro account is totally worth the money. It's great for sharing pictures with family and friends.
Gotta go, I have to go vacuum 20 pounds of sand out of the minivan.
Till later.
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