Myrtle Beach

We spent the past week taking a vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We broke the 11 hour/700 mile drive into two days, stopping in Virginia (motto: "rain and traffic") on the way down and West Virginia (motto: "curves and tolls") on the way back. We stayed at a little mom and pop hotel (if your pop is named "Hampton"), which had a pretty nice view from the balcony:

Mom and pop had nine different swimming pools:

The kids by far preferred the lazy rivers the best. Henry would have stayed in here all day if we'd let him:

All three kids have really expanded their swimming abilities since taking just two weeks of lessons this summer at the Dublin rec. Henry went from being afraid to get his head wet to jumping right in, Kate's learning to dog paddle, and Sam had a breakthrough and was finally willing to let go of me (or Jodi) and paddle around on his own with his noodle:

Kate loved the lazy river and the kiddie splash area:

Of course, we also spent each morning and late afternoon at the beach:

 

The first morning, we walked to a distant pier (about 1.5 miles down the beach, farther than we had thought). You can see our little hotel way in the background:

It's the one that looks godawful far away. We had to bribe the kids with ice cream to get them moving for the return trip:

We had to cut out to Ocean Blvd to route around a canal, so we stopped for a picture:

This is probably the longest any of us have walked, barefoot.

Kate and Henry showed off their victory dance upon returning to the hotel:

We had lunch one day at "Broadway at the Beach", which is kind of like a collection of theme restaurants (eg, "Hard Rock Cafe") around a fake lake. We had a mediocre lunch on the deck at Key West Grille, where we were serenaded by power boat rides and helicopter tours:

We did find a playground here, so there's my blog touch point:

Jodi managed to look cool in the little shade she could find:

Some of the playground scenery was a little different than our usual playgrounds:

But I managed to take this all in stride.

For our last night at MB, we attended a Pirate dinner show. I'm saving $36 by showing this picture we took outside, since we didn't buy the green screen picture they took of us inside:

And that was it. We headed home Thursday, stopping every so often so the kids could stretch their legs:

It's nice to travel, but sure is nice to be home where we don't have to share a bed with kicking kids!