And to cap it all--Myrtle Beach

While the other two legs of the vacation were plenty of fun, it was all leading up to this, the third leg of the journey--a week in Myrtle Beach.

We drove from Charleston about two hours up the South Carolina coast. I think we were pretty close to the ocean much of the way, but the highway was lined with forest. We couldn't see very far, but it was still pretty. One thing I like about the east is how lush and green it is.

Our GPS had a little trouble getting us the to right spot at first, because it turns out the town just to the south also has some Myrtle Beach addresses. So we kept driving up and down a little residential street with the right name and the right numbers, but not finding the right place AT ALL. We called the Westgate Resort timeshare , where the clerk said, "It's impossible to miss us--we're right across from Family Fun." Nope, no Family Fun anywhere to be seen. Finally, we went back out to the highway to try again. And called the Westgate again. That's when they figured out what the trouble was, and where we really were, and gave us very clear directions. Shwew! And yes, once you get in the right vicinity, it was impossible to miss, with the small Family Fun amusement park across the street.

 

We drove down to a state park section of beach and walked out on the pier. What a beautiful day!

 

The big buildings in the background are the Myrtle Beach hotels.

 

 

The hotel was nice and RIGHT on the beach. I enjoyed going out on the balcony and watching (mostly listening to) the roller coaster and other rides from across the street while also waching the water with the banana boats (banana-shaped air rafts being pulled by speed boats) and parasailing on the other side. Myrtle Beach sits on what is called the Grand Strand, an uninterrupted stretch of beach about 60 miles long! The little section of sand by the hotel is their own private beach. To someone with California sensibilities, the idea of a private beach seems strange, kind of like a private bit of sky. We didn't see any barriers to keep out non-hotel guests, though, there's just no direct access from the street. So it was a less crowded than the public areas on either side.

One thing we liked about the hotel, along with the location, was the kitchenette. Eating at restaurants is great, but it adds up and even loses its appeal after a while. So we found a regular grocery store and enjoyed cooking and eating home food.

 

For a change of scenery, we also hiked around in the forest at the state park.

 

Golf may be the main attraction at Myrtle Beach. There are many courses around, and many types of courses, from traditional 18-hole to par-3 to over-the top mini-golf each trying to outdo each other for lights and oversized structures (dinosaurs, pirate ships, what-have-you). We're not golfers, but we kept meaning to try out some kind of golf. We just never got around to it, because there were plenty of other things to do.

 

We saw a couple of shows at night, including the 3D version of Titanic, a musical revue, and (probably my favorite) Le Grand Cirque, a circus in the style of Cirque du Soleil. When it was about time for the circus show to start, the house lights hadn't yet come down and people were still finding their seats. We noticed one of the performers, a clown, showing people to their seats. Except he led them to seats where people were already sitting, or led them up to the stage where he left them sitting on the floor. Or he just tore up their tickets and tossed them in the air. As he went on to the next group of hapless theater-goers, real ushers would discreetly show the last confused group to their actual seats. It took us a minute to realize this was in the fact the start of the show. I could tell you that they had fun performing dogs, and all kinds of acrobats, some strong men and daredevil motorcycles that zoomed around inside a round cage, but that doesn't quite get it across. We really enjoyed it.

 

 

Outside the theater after the musical revue.

 

The name of the theater here looks like half the lights are burnt out, but we just caught it in the middle of lighting up, which it did every couple of minutes.

Another theater across the parking lot--I think they did a sort of pirate dinner-entertainment.

 

 

The hotel had chairs and umbrellas to check out, which always improves a beach experience--except when the wind catches hold of the umbrella. Only happened once, maybe because we put it down.

 

 

Ooh that water's cold! I know the east has the Gulf Stream, which generally keeps the water warm, but this was early April after all.

Posing after the circus show--I'm holding the photo of ourselves that we broke down and bought and had the cast memebers sign. We were surprised at how young most of them were. 

 



On our last day, the time share people tried to talk us into converting our one-week stay to a full membership. We might have been tempted, with the huge discount they offered compared to the first time we sat through the sales pitch, but we had a hard enough time using this one--almost didn't make the deadline. The problem for us is the cost of traveling to the destinations, plus there are usually events with family or friends that take our travel time and budget. We can see, though, that for a bigger family who wants to take the whole crew on vacation it could be a good option--more space than a hotel, kitchen, lots of activities available, etc.

 

Anyway, after enjoying our seven-night stay and fending off time-share offers, we headed back to Charleston to catch the flight home. And drove through a forest fire to get there. Remember I said the highway was lined with forest? Well, in one section it was ablaze. Fortunately it was back from the road enough that they didn't have to close the highway, but it was sure smokey.

 

This was our first experience with South Carolina, and we really enjoyed it. For anyone looking for a new vacation destination, we'd recommend either Charleston or Myrtle Beach. In fact maybe we'll swing back by there sometime, after exploring a few other places, like London and Africa. And we'll bring our new camera so (hopefully) more of our pictures will turn out.

Charleston and Ft. Sumter

So, the next installment of our epic trip: We flew out of Orlando late Thursday evening--after a relaxing day poolside and around Downtown Disney (have I mentioned I would like to live in that Disney Hilton hotel?)--and arrived in Charleston, SC, after midnight.

Friday was recovery day, then Saturday we picked up a rental car and headed to Myrtle Beach by way of Charleston Harbour and Ft. Sumter, which as you recall was where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. The long way around, but well worth it.

Visiting Ft. Sumter National Park is free, if you have your own boat. It's on a small, man-made island out in the harbour, so if you don't happen to have your own boat, which we don't, you probably need to take the official tour boat, which costs $17 (just in case you're in the area and want to check it out).

We went to catch the boat from Liberty Square at Aquarium Wharf, driving through the beautiful historic (colonial-era, I'm guessing) Charleston downtown. We were on time in that the boat hadn't left yet, but late in that it was completely full. You can see it waiting there behind us.

So we took some pictures and drove across that gorgeous bridge to the other side of the harbour, where the boat would take off for the next tour in about an hour.

Here we are on the other side, at Patriot's Point, with the gorgeous bridge behind us.

Why is this park on the far side called Patriot's Point? Glad you asked. Because of the USS Yorktown (which you can see behind us) is docked there.  You can go aboard for another $17, but we didn't have time either before our tour left, or afterwards because we had to hustle on up to Myrtle Beach. But we did look around the park, landside, and took some pictures.

Such as with this WWII-era big gun . . .

and this torpedo . . .

and this gun turret (looks like it's aimed to take out those threatening cars in the parking lot).

Finally, we went aboard and were told all kinds of interesting history (such as the island being made from granite brought down from New England) as we made our way to Ft. Sumter. It didn't look impressive from the approach, but apparently it used to be taller. Wars have a way of breaking things down.

Of course there was a lovely marker. By the way, don't be fooled by the bright sunshine. While the sun had been almost hot on the mainland, the wind blowing across the harbour made the boat ride and the island really chilly. Uchenna had thought ahead and brought a sweatshirt, but I just had to be tough.

We toured the low cave-like perimeter defenses where the guns were kept and fired.

And looked out through the tunnel of the entrance. Those walls are really thick!

We went to the upper deck, which gives a broader view of the harbor and an overview of those cave-like gun bays you can see behind me.

The museum was small but informative, with all kinds of background information. Major Anderson, the Union commander of the Fort, was actually a good friend and mentor to Brigadier General Beauregard, the southern commander. The South laid siege to the Fort, and when they knew supplies were on the way, they figured they'd better act fast and started firing. After 34 hours of bombardment, Major Anderson agreed to surrender and evacuate.

This flag on wall of the museum was much bigger than it looks here (guess we should have included a person to provide scale), and was the flag that hung over the fort at the time of the bombardment. Have you ever seen that configuration of stars on a flag? It was a new one for me.

After enjoying our brush with history, we hopped in the car and drove two hours up the coast to Myrtle Beach. But that's a story for another day.

Epic trip 2012: The Orlando leg

The Giant Tinker Toy at the entrance to Downtown Disney

While my computer and the blog site refused to talk to each other for the past two years, life has continued to be full of adventure. We got to travel to lots of places, mostly with Uchenna's work (meaning we got to stay in some high-end hotels we wouldn't otherwise consider), including a conference in Detroit; an assignment in Bellingham, WA that allowed us to also see Seattle and Vancouver, BC; a friend's graduation in Chicago; California for a wedding and a funeral; Utah for a recruiting trip; and the list goes on.

This year we combined work and personal into one big, two-week trip. Remember that one-time trial week of a time share we let ourselves get talked into? Well it was expiring this spring and we thought, great, we're not going to be able to use it and there goes our money.

But then Uchenna got a chance to take a training course in Orlando (hey, if you're going to have a training course, why not Orlando?) and we thought that's not too far from Myrtle Beach, one of the time share options. And we've never been anywhere like Myrtle Beach.

So an ambitious plan was formed to spend most of the first week in Orlando, fly up to Charleston, SC, on Thursday, then drive the two hours to Myrtle Beach on Saturday and fly home the following Saturday. Shwew!

Since it was such an epic trip, I'll just talk about Orlando here, and talk about the other two locations in later posts.

Our flight was at 6 am, which meant we left the house at about 4:30 am. Two weeks in an airport parking lot can add up, so a VERY kind friend drove us to the airport. We were in transit during the morning session of Conference, but we got to our hotel in time for the afternoon session. We had it streaming on our computer, but unfortunately fell asleep about 5 minutes into the first talk.

Our hotel, where the course was being held, was the Lake Buena Vista Hilton, within the Disney Resort and right across the street from Downtown Disney. Beautiful hotel, fabulous location. And housekeeping left us little towel animals. Can I live there for, like, the rest of my life?


While Uchenna was in his class all day, I browsed through the shops in Downtown Disney. How many departments of people do they have sitting around dreaming up Disney merchandise? This t-shirt was one of my favorites. Here's the back and the front.

I almost bought these Star Wars/Muppets mash-ups. Cracked me up!

There were also fantastic galleries of non-Disney stuff, like glass art, whimsical or quirky or just beautiful.

In the evenings Uchenna and I went to dinner and wandered around listening to the street performers.

We didn't actually go to this dinosaur-themed restaurant, but had to get pictures. It looked like Rainforest Cafe with dinos. Planet Hollywood was really lively. Seemed all the high school bands and cheer squads and dance troups performing that week were eating there the night we went. The DJ kept sending shoutouts to the various groups, which necessitated lots of cheering.

The other restaurants were calmer, like House of Blues and Raglan Road. We had lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express, but there was another Puck restaurant that seemed to think its celebrity chef was pretty special.

Of course we had to get pictures with the various Lego sculptures around the big Lego store. Yes, I looked closely and that sea monster is totally made of Legos!

 Here I am having a princess moment.

Downtown Disney stretches along the side of a small lake, with this lovely waterside walk.

We thought about going up in this tethered hotair balloon, but either there were long lines or it was grounded due to high winds at upper altitudes.

We loved the beautiful garden setting.

The last night we were there we went to see Hunger Games at a Downtown Disney theater was set up as a restaurant with a counter-like table in front of each row. The servers took orders before the show started, then discreetly brought it out during the movie. I thought it might be distracting, but not too bad and certainly novel.

Downtown Disney was so fun and we were looking forward to the later stages of our trip, so we didn't worry about going into Epcot or the Magic Kingdom or going on rides. Besides, we did all that the last time we were there, in 2009. Stay tuned for the our continuing adventures in South Carolina.