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Myrtle Beach reminded me a lot of the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area. But its the beach instead of the mountains that attracts visitors.
In addition to beach activities, the entire town is filled with amusements, entertainment, and dining opportunities designed, mostly, for families.
We took in several of those attractions. I want to share those experiences with you. This will make for a pretty long post but I hope you will enjoy my recollections.
On the Monday of our stay we decided to go to an area called "Broadway On The Beach."
This expansive venue takes up 7 blocks between 21st and 28th avenues just off Rt. 17.
Our main reason for going there was to watch the recently released Marvel Avengers: Infinity War in their 16 screen theater.
Because of the where the parking, in back of the buildings, we had a bit of trouble finding the the place. When we finally did it, was very close to the starting time.
We had a bit of a problem with a Coke Freestyle machine before we went into the movie. But once we got into the theater and the film started everything turned out okay.
After the movie we walked down from the theater across a bridge over the lake. We were both hungry and decided to go to Paula Deen's restaurant for a late lunch.
Having been to Deen's restaurant in Pigeon Forge a couple of times, we knew what to expect.
The interior of the building was exactly like the one in the Smokies: a retail store on the first floor and the restaurant on the 2nd. The food was okay but a couple of the entrees were disappointing. On a 1-5 scale I'd give the experience a 2.5.
Because we were still tired from our couple of days of traveling we didn't do much of anything else in the area. We did take a selfie with Paula Deen's in the distant background.
We left that day with the intention of going back but we never did.
On Tuesday evening we took in a dinner show. If you've been reading this series you can probably guess which one it was: The Pirate Voyage Dinner Show.
Our experience didn't start out very well. We arrived late for the preshow and there wasn't any place for us to sit and watch it. I was not pleased.
But as you can see from this picture once we got into our seats for the show I was smiling.
The menu was the same as it is at any other Dolly Parton owned show and it was pretty good.
I liked this one a lot better than the Smokey Mountain Adventure show we saw in Pigeon Forge last September.
The set was a lot more immersing.
It had some pretty cool special effects.
The story were very well paced. There was action all over. The water tank, ship sets, ropes, platforms, and runways were all involved in the show; sometimes at once.
The only thing I found lacking was humor. There wasn't really any comic relief element to it. The whimsy of the trained sea lion was amusing but not funny enough. I like having all that action but there needed to be some laughs along the way too.
On Wednesday, we went to the attractions area of the Myrtle Beach boardwalk promenade. The area encompasses 3 blocks along Oceanfront Blvd that's reminds me of the parkway through Gatlinburg than any place in town. Along the street is the touristy area filled with attractions, amusements, and shopping.
Walk a half a block closer to the beach and you will find yourself along the boardwalk promenade.
This area has the feel of a Jersey shore boardwalk. It's not upscale by any means but it is entertaining. There's your usual mix of t-shirt shops, arcades, snack food places, sit down restaurants and bars.
We went into an arcade called "Fun Plaza". It was quite large arcade with both boardwalk and Oceanfront Blvd entrances. Just about every kind of arcade game you can think of was there.
Paula found a replica of one our son's favorite characters from back when he was a kid. She took a picture and sent it to James.
We played Skee Ball and video Yatzee but the thing that we'll always remember from this arcade is the old time baseball game.
One wall of the place was lined with these old fashioned pinball type games. I remember playing these at the Bushkill Park arcade when I was growing up.
Using marble sized metal balls, a spring-loaded pivoting bat, and ramps that represent hits and or outs you played a simulated 3 inning game for a quarter.
I started playing one and did pretty good but not great. Then my wife decided that she wanted to try it. She killed it; scoring 20 runs or more in most her games. As competitive as she is, she didn't hesitate to claim bragging rights for the rest of the trip.
Eventually, we turned in the coupons we earned in for a couple of toys for my granddaughter including some finger cuffs.
The day was getting a bit warm so we decided to stop in a sports bar called "Moe's on the Boardwalk."
We each got a drink and shared a soft pretzel with cheese dip. Paula's drink had a little umbrella in it.
The last thing I did on the boardwalk was one of my favorite things about entire vacation. I took a ride on The SkyWheel.
Riding this attraction was a lot of fun. Paula, who isn't a fan of Ferris wheels, stayed at Moe's while I went to ride.
I took this shot from the wheel. You can't see her but she's sitting at at the table inside the window just behind the double palm tree and last umbrella near the center.
This wheel is the same size as the one I rode in Orlando in 2016, 400 ft. high. You get to go 4 times around. This one was a lot better than Florida though because there were things to see. Here are a couple of still shots I took while riding.
I shot a couple of videos while riding as well. They are on my You Tube channel. Here are the links:
Myrtle Beach Sky Wheel Pt 1.
Myrtle Beach Sky Wheel Pt. 2
So there you have the attractions that my wife and I visited during our vacation.
I know this has been a long post but there was a lot to write about. Here's a bit of a preview of what my next post is going to be about.
Although we didn't spend a whole lot of time at the beach compared to last year's trip to Destin, we did spend a considerable amount of time walking the surf collecting shells.
In doing so we experienced something for the very first time, a sight seeing tour aboard a boat.
More on that in the next and final installment in this series.
The last couple of posts were chronological accounts of the first couple of days of our vacation.
Rather than continue to go with a "day by day" recounting, the remainder of the entries in this series are going to focus specific activities we enjoyed over the course of the week.
But first, there are some elements I need to share with you which were important factors throughout our time in South Carolina.
Myrtle Beach is at the center of larger tourist area called "The Grand Strand". It covers two-counties (Horry & Georgetown). It is bordered by North Myrtle Beach, obviously, to the north and Georgetown to the south.
There are about a dozen communities within that span. Each of them have a variety of restaurants, hotels, resorts and businesses that cater to families, and beach lovers. During our stay we visited places throughout the Grand Strand.
Unfortunately, our visit was right at the same time as one of the Grand Strands' biggest drawls. It was "Bike Week"; a semi-annual event that brings lots of business to the area.
Motorcycles, most with both a driver and a rider, were all over the place the entire week. This made the restaurants, attractions, and the roadways crowded during our entire stay. We didn't really have any problem with them, but just the potential for issues was an underlying concern for me all week.
The third factor, we realized just moments after we checked into our resort. As we were unloading our car, a commercial passenger jet flew directly over our building. The noise was extremely loud. The hotel was directly in the take off path of the Myrtle Beach International Airport just 2.5 miles away.
A variety of aircraft ranging from a single engine prop plane to large multi-jet airliners would randomly depart throughout the day. Luckily it was mostly during "normal" hours and tailed off around early evening. But in the morning they would shake our hotel room and drown out sound of the ocean while we were on the beach.
But without a doubt, the one element that made the difference on the enjoyment side of of our vacation ledger was the our hotel room. The view from room 532 in the Palmetto building of the Double Tree Oceanside resort was amazing.
Here's a still shot and a video of what we saw every time we looked out from the balcony.
In addition to the view it gave us, it was only a 5-10 minute walk to the beach.
Just below us was the resort's lazy river.
A quick trek across the "river" area and it was a 100 yards or so to the waves. This pic with our balcony railing in the foreground will give you an idea of what I mean.
With those things covered let me get into the best part of our vacation: spending time at the beach. But that's for the next post.
In the meantime, let me whet your appetite with a video of what served as the atmosphere for our first morning in Myrtle Beach. Enjoy and I'll see you next time.
Welcome to part 2 of my vacation series. This post is going to be more for the purpose of transition than anything else. It may not be that interesting but it's necessary to set up the rest of this series.
The 2nd day of our 2018 vacation got off to a rather early start. That's because we had a long day head of us.
We had to drive 2 hours east to meet up with my son and daughter-in-law in Crossville, TN. It's at exit 320 of I-40; about halfway between Bowling Green & Pigeon Forge.
We got there a little early because I miscalculated the difference in time zones.
When our kids arrived at the Pilot truck stop agreed on as our meet up point, we were sitting in the dining room of the Wendy's restaurant.
I want to send out a big "Thank You" to them for taking the time out of their day to "save" our vacation. The entire round trip for them was over 5 hours. I appreciate them sacrificing their day to help us out. It was a unique and very giving Mother's Day present for my wife.
Around 11, we said "good-bye" to Michael and Heather and headed back east on I-40.
We had about 9 hours and just under 500 miles ahead of us. We "lost" an hour going from the central to the eastern time zones.
As we drove through Knoxville, I made mention to Paula that sometime when we were passing through and had the time, I'd like to take the time to go visit the Sunsphere. It's one of two structures built for the 1982 World's Fair that are still standing.
Paula and I have been going to the Smoky Mountains ever since 2001. Our favorite route to travel is taking 65 south to 40 east, getting off at the Sevierville, exit 407. This was the first time in a decade and a half of traveling that route that we went beyond that exit.
It was at this point of our getaway that the adventure began for me. We were in a part of the country I'd never been before. I always like going to new places. You never know what you're going to find.
The journey was a combination of a new experience and comfortable familiarity. I was driving and Paula was riding shotgun.
As has become our routine when on the road, there was an open bag of cheddar cheese flavored Combos, the our drinks were in the cup holders between us, and an XM radio satellite station playing 70s music was on the Kia's stereo.
In every marriage there is at least one or two places or situations that brings out the best in that relationship. It's different for each couple but there is at least one.
For Paula and me, one of those is being on the road together. Whether its because we are heading for a single day event, a getaway weekend or a week long vacation, it is our "Sweet Spot". It has been from the very beginning. So even though getting to our destination this time made for a long day it was still "Us" at our best.
We went through North Carolina on 40 turning southeast onto 26 just before Ashville
. We crossed over to South Carolina heading toward Spartanburg.
Of course along the way we'd make occasional stops to stretch our legs, take restroom breaks, get drink refills and putting gas in the car. I prefer Pilot truck stops but we did stop at other convenience stores as well.
A turn east at Columbia took us to Florence via I-26 & I-20. From there, we went from a 6 lane interstate to a local county highway. It was 4 lanes but went through a lot of local areas speed zones ranging from 35-55 MPH. The last 75 miles of driving to Myrtle Beach took about 90 minutes.
Along the way were many local businesses. We saw quite a few including: small fruit & produce stands, souvenir & area information centers, restaurants and more.
Once we passed the town of "Conway" on 501, we were in Horry county. The ocean front was still about 40 miles away but we had arrived the area known as "The Grand Strand". More on just that the region encompasses later.
The sun was going down and darkness was setting in; we were getting road weary. We had been traveling for more than 12 hours. We were both in that "I just want to get there and get out of the car" mode.
Although it was quite a bit away from the lighthouses along the South Carolina coastline, Rt 501 had its own plethora of "beacons" guiding us toward our destination.
I'm talking about a never-ending series of billboards for the Pirates Voyage Dinner & Show. The Dolly Parton owned attraction in Myrtle beach had an overkill amount of billboards lining the highway from Conway to North Myrtle beach. I've never seen such saturation for one attraction. There were, what seemed to be, hundreds of them in clusters of 4-6 at a time. They went on for miles.
Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of any of them. But if you ever take 501 into that area you will see them for sure. BTW, they proved to be effective, at least on us.
Finally, we reached Myrtle Beach and made the turn onto South King's Highway. A combination of nightfall, our fatigued induced difficulty to focus, an unfamiliarity with the area and our GPS giving us rather vague directions, we had some trouble finding our resort.
But eventually, much to our relief, we did find the Doubletree Oceanfront resort. As we checked in the anticipatory wonder of what our room was going to be like set in.
We were in a part of the resort known at the "Palmetto" building; room 532.
The room was amazing. It was rather spacious for a hotel room. It had a comfortable King sized bed and a balcony that looked out onto the beach. We could open the curtains and see the ocean from anywhere in the room. More about the room later in this series.
We brought our luggage up to our room. While we were both really tired we still had a couple of things to do.
We went out and picked up a pizza at a nearby Papa John's and did some initial grocery shopping at the local Walmart.
By about 10 o'clock we found ourselves back in our room, sitting on the balcony eating pizza and enjoying the sound of the ocean.
Our vacation had begun. I spent a few moments of reverie telling my wife how being on that balcony was so surreal. How she has made my life so much more than I ever expected it to be.
As our 2nd day of our getaway was coming to an end I was extremely grateful to be where I was, for who I was with and what we were going to get the chance to do over the next few days.
It would take us both a couple of days to get over the fatigue the activities of the weekend had caused. But this didn't keep us from enjoying where we were.
This brings me to the end of part 2 of this series. In the next post I will share with you our first "official" day in Myrtle Beach.
Thank you for reading my block. I will let you know when Part 3 is posted.
Hello There! I've been away from this blog for 6 months so I thought it might be time to get back to it.
I can't think of any better subject to start with than sharing my experience from last week. My wife and I went on vacation.
We enjoyed our time in Destin, Florida last year, so much, that we decided to go back to the beach for our 2018 vacation.
We were trying to decide whether to go to Gulf Shores, AL, one of the beaches on the east side of the Florida peninsula, or Myrtle Beach, SC. We asked our friends on Facebook for some help with our decision.
When my cousin, Roger, contacted me to tell me that he could get us a good deal on a hotel room at a resort in Myrtle Beach; we settled on going there.
(BTW, a big "Thank You" to Roger. I'm not going to give the details. Let me just say that he helped us get a great deal at a very nice resort; saving us quite a bit of $$)
With my cousin's help, we booked our room in early March. The next two months were so busy for us that we really didn't do very much planning. That's really out of character for us, especially me.
However, we did plan on making our trip a little more relaxing by stopping for the night in the Smoky Mountains area on our way there.
While we do find ourselves in Pigeon Forge, TN quite often, (September of 18 was the last time) this quick visit, on the way to a farther destination, would be a first for us.
On the way down the Parkway I snapped this shot of our my favorite attraction facade in the area.
For this one-night stop, we were doing something we hadn't in several years; spending a night in a hotel room. We usually rent a condo. Our choice of hotel was a Best Western on the Parkway just down the road from our favorite condo complex.
Our trip was going well up until the moment we discovered that we had left something very important at home. In a bit of miscommunication, while packing the car, we missed it. Without it, getting the restful type of sleep needed during the week would not be possible.
A mode of panic took over for a few minutes as we scrambled for ideas on how to take care of our problem. We tried to find a way to rent a unit from a Myrtle Beach area pharmacy. But after about half an hour of searching the internet, and making several unanswered phone calls, it became clear that it wasn't going to work out.
There was only one other alternative. I would find someone back at home to go to our house, get what we needed, and then bring it to us.
But I couldn't ask them to drive all the way to Pigeon Forge. We would have to backtrack and meet them halfway.
I called my son, Michael. He agreed to help us out. We would meet the next morning at 10 o'clock in Crossville, TN.
With the "save" of our vacation set up, we decided to go out and have some fun in Pigeon Forge.
We went to "The Alamo" restaurant for dinner. It's a place we've wanted to go for a while. Our first dining experience would be a good one. Paula had, what she said was, the best filet mignon she's ever had.
Next, it was off to one of our favorite spots in Pigeon Forge "The Island".
Even though it was pretty crowded, we still managed to get to some of our favorite activities. We browsed through some of the shops, played the "Harpoon Lagoon" video game in the arcade, and snacked on some soft pretzel mini-dogs.
Of course, all of this was done in the shadow of "The Wheel".
We needed to get an early start in order to meet Michael in the morning. We headed back to the hotel rather early in order to get as much rest as we could.
That's where I'll leave you for the first of this series about our 2018 vacation. The next chapter I'll share our long day on the road getting to Myrtle Beach.
As usual, I was excited about going on vacation; but the first day of this one turned out to have a bit of additional excitement for me.
The day ended in a way I never expected at when it started. For me, the wonder of those types of days are what keeps life interesting.
Of course, I am talking about those that turn out in a good way. The days ending in unexpected "bad" ways, I would rather do without.
While we would be back tracking the next day and would be on the road for twice as long as originally planned; overall the results would be good. At the end of our second day away, I would find myself on the threshold of a new adventure with the Love of My Life.
I'll be sharing the details of that adventure in this series.
Thanks for coming back to my blog. I plan on getting back to posting again on a regular basis. Hopefully, I can carry through with that plan. Catch you next time.
