Mrytle Beach Trip!

We flew into Raleigh NC and had to drive to Myrtle Beach. Before we started our drive we went and visited Duke and UNC’s campuses. It was a blast – way more fun than I was expecting. Duke is seriously the most beautiful college I have ever seen. Every building was like a castle. We happened to show up exactly at graduation so it was fun to see everyone dressed up and bustling about. I now have much grander aspirations for where my girls are going to school – Go DUKE!

Our trip to Myrtle Beach was AWESOME!!! We truly had a great time, but it was not what we had expected. We thought we were going to a nice quiet beach community. We were way off. Myrtle Beach is 28 miles of total tourist chaos! It was anything, but quiet. To make it even more interesting we happened to book our trip during Bike Week. We had 52 weeks to choose from – seriously what luck! It actually was so much fun to see all the bikes and everyone may have looked a little rough around the edges, but they were all really fun and especially cute with Bean. She would give all the bikes around us thumbs up and say, “Nice bike, dude!” It was seriously amazing how many bikes were in town. The estimates were 300,000 bikes came in for the week. It definitely felt like it - by Friday we couldn’t drive anywhere without being completely surrounded by hogs.

One day we pulled up to get gas and Chip started to sing, “One of these things is not like the other.” I looked up and had to get this picture. Seriously, so many bikes!

We got these metal ties for Blakeslie’s hair. The Biker Chicks wore them to keep their ponytails out of their faces when they ride. Blakeslie thought they were her princess ponies and strutted around showing them off.

The bikes did make for an adventure, but we did have our quiet beach time too. We went to a couple of different beaches, but our most favorite was a very secluded beautiful white sand beach on Pawley’s Island. The sand was so white and fine just like in Cancun and there were more shells than I have ever seen on a beach. We had a blast. Even Mayzie enjoyed the shells and sand – the water, not so much.



The Grand Strand – the 28 miles of tourist chaos had at least 25 different miniature golf places. Blakeslie knew where we were on the road based on which putt, putt we were passing. We had a great time going to her two favorites – Captain Hook’s and Jurassic Park.

We had so much fun going to the Alligator Adventure. It is an alligator habitat with over 1600 alligators. They were all in different parts of the park based on their size. We saw some amazingly big gators and a few albino ones that were pretty cool. They had a feeding session where they throw chicken out into the swamp and feed the big guys – very exciting. We also sat through a reptile show, which was Blakeslie’s favorite and she is still telling everyone about. She got to hold a 3 year old alligator and a 5 foot python. (This is where you close your eyes Mom.) I can’t believe how not wussy she is!

We also got to hold a tiger and a little monkey. Blakeslie loved it!

We took a day trip to Charleston to see the sights. It was such a beautiful town full of so much history. We wished we had more than just one day to spend there. We took a bike taxi to the Edmonton-Alston house. It was a beautiful old house on the peninsula. The homes were amazing – it was fun just to drive around all the little streets. We also took a carriage ride around the city and had a great narration of all the amazing things that happened it Charleston. Blakeslie made a new best friend named Sarah, who let Blakeslie drive the carriage around the block to get the horse Misty her dinner- Bean was in heaven.

Mayzie loved her first time swimming!

We went to Teddy Town and Blakeslie made her very own stuffed animal. She got to pick out its eyes, personality (she says imagination) she helped stuff it and then dressed and named it. Its name is Silly the Great – where do they come up with this stuff?

Our funniest adventure of the week was where we had lunch one afternoon. Keep in mind it is a very long strip of about a million restaurants- more than plenty to choose from. After finishing miniature golf we headed out to find a place to eat. First we headed north and then I found this coupon in one of the travel books.

I read what it said “Voted one of the top 10 places to take the kids in the nation.” –USA Today. Chip said, “Oh I know exactly where that is – it is in a mall not to far from the condo.” So we turned around and started driving south. 1 hour later….everyone is starving and bordering very grumpy…we pull up to this place.

Which was obviously off the beaten path and no where near a mall. We couldn’t believe it, but by this time we were all too hungry to go somewhere else and we had to see why it was such a great place to take kids. The bar was biker heaven and the inside was worse than the outside if you can believe it. To make it worse I had to feed the baby. It had to be the most uncomfortable place to choose to nurse. It was actually such a funny experience, but I gave Chip soooo much grief. Blakeslie told him he had lost all privileges of choosing where we ate from now on. We are hoping that one of the other locations on the coupon was the place for kids because this was not. I told Chip I was writing to USA Today! Of course we survived our adventure with only mild warping of our children’s brains and some good laughs.

We couldn’t resist joining in. Chip really wanted to rent a Harley with a side car so we could all cruise, but we settled for these pictures instead.