Myrtle Beach Vacation-Part 3: Setting The Scene

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.