Myrtle Beach - the finale

We made our annual trip to Myrtle Beach for the yearly family vacation. This is our 11th time to go. We bought a timeshare from Fairfield (looking back I wouldn't do that again but I digress) in 1998. You have a lot of resorts you can use. We picked Myrtle Beach for the first trip and loved it so much we've gone there every year.

This was the first year without Jonathan. Being in college, his fall break didn't line up with Josh's plus it was only two days, so he didn't go. We missed him on the trip.

We left Saturday after Josh ran in the Paducah Tilghman XC Invitational. He ran his best time ever 19:37. We headed out after that. We picked up a rental car in Nashville since it's much cheaper even with parking than renting in Paducah (I'll save my rant about rental cars and taxes for another post). We got to our usual stopping point of Spartanburg South Carolina and checked into the Fairfield Inn to spend the night.

THe next morning, I ran and then we went to Boiling Springs church of Christ. We've gone there for several years on the way there so people know us. We ate at Zaxbys (a place we always go when we can) and headed out. We got to the Wyndham Westwinds and then went to Myrtle Beach church of Christ.

On Monday, we laid in supplies at Wal-Mart. We hung out at the beach for the day then ate sinner at Lone Star Steakhouse. Tuesday, Josh and I went to the Nascar Recepark. They didn't have any of the tracks for older people open. Josh wanted to ride the ones restricted to people with a driver's license but it wasn't open. So, we went to Atlanticus Miniature Golf instead. It's my favorite course. Part is inside and part out. We missed Jonathan. Whenever he had a shot close to the hole, he'd want to go ahead and tap in saying "But, I've got a good shot". We played three rounds and went back to the resort and swam in the ocean. We went to Myiabi Japanese Steakhouse for dinner.

Wednesday, we just hung out at the resort. Josh cooked dinner (bacon and biscuits and gravy). We went to Myrtle Beach church of Christ for Wednesday night Bible study.

Thursday, Josh and I went to Dino's Pancake House for breakfast and got stuffed. Then we went to Magiquest. We've been there several years in a row. If you love role playing games, you'd love this place. You get a wand which you buy minutes for. You can do all sorts of things with it. You can open treasure chests, play games, get information and even fight dragons with it. It's really neat. The wand stores your info and progress, so we bring them back every year to do the new quests they add. When our minutes run out, they have a wizard dueling area that we always do. I actually won once, but Josh whipped me every other time. We went back to the resort.

We went to eat at Fuddrucker's. I generally try to go to these wherever I see them. They have really good burgers plus a bakery/ice cream area which is really good. I got a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich. Josh got a chocolate milkshake (one of those made in the metal container that is really two milkshakes). Donna got a hot fudge sundae that was huge!. Needless to say, we were well stuffed. Donna and I took our traditional last night of the trip walk on the beach.

Friday, we got up and finished packing and headed out. The trip out went better than any other we'd ever had leaving Myrtle Beach. We generally hit a massive traffic jam either right before or after Asheville, but didn't this time. We were making such great time that I cancelled our hotel in Newport and we went as far as Nasvhille and stayed there.

We ordered from Ruby Tuesday to go. I was surprised at how good the food was. We used to have one in Paducah and we gave up eating there after a few tries because the service was bad and the food mediocre.

We got up on Saturday and I returned the rental car and we headed for home. We got back around noon.

I'll miss these trips a lot. We made an immense amount of family memories on our Myrtle Beach vacations.