North Myrtle Beach

We left bright and early Friday morning and headed off to

It took us about 9 hours to get there. I got a lot of reading done on the drive. Taylor brought one of his Harry Potter books to keep him entertained. We were glad about that as he can get "antsy" and "pesty." Andrea was the map reader and guide for Mark.

After getting settled in and checking out the beach we decided to go out and find a seafood place to eat at. After eating look what we found!

We couldn't pass that up.

The next morning we got up and the waves looked good so they decided to...

Surf!!!!!!!!

One day while eating at Subway we noticed that Surf City was two stores down. We decided to go in and see what they had. Mark found a surfboard that he really liked. They decided to trade in Andrea's surfboard and get this one. I found some flip flops. I also found this shirt that says, "Surfers Rule" that I knew Andrea would want. She is wearing it in the picture with her new surfboard. If I would have let her, she would have worn that shirt for the rest of our trip.

Parking was a joke. We ended up finding this cone that had the word "Engineering" written on it. So we put it to good use. Each day when we left we put the cone in our parking space, which happened to be right by the door to the stairs, in hopes that it would still be there when we got back. Every time we would go into the parking garage we would say, "Is the cone going to be there?" Would you know that it worked the whole time we were there until the last night. Another car took our spot!

We were amazed at how many people could fit on the beach in a tiny area. Take a look at the before and after pictures.

One day Mark decided to rent an umbrella and 2 chairs for the day. He wanted to have the experience of sitting on the beach all day long. He could barely make it through. Taylor, I think, sat down in the chair for maybe 2 minutes at the most.

I got up each morning around 6:00 and went for my jog/walk. Here is a picture of a sunrise I was able to view. It was beautiful.

Each night I would go for a walk around 8:00. It was so relaxing to walk barefoot in the sand, feel the water run over your feet and listen to the waves crash on the beach. It was also fun to view all the creations that were made by kids throughout the day. Taylor joined me a few times. He brought along his skim board on one of the walks.

On our last day there we found this really good ice cream shop. We wished we had found it sooner.

We left Friday morning and decided to go home a different way. When we got near St. Augustine we decided to take one of the exits and go exploring in hopes of finding a seafood restaurant. We drove past the fort and turned down this road that lead us into this little neighborhood. We stopped a man who was walking his dog and asked him if he knew of any good seafood restaurants. He began to talk about this one that was on A1A heading south. We finally found it tucked in a corner. We are so glad that we stopped that man. It was the best seafood restaurant we have ever been to. We had gone by a Cold Stone Creamery on our way to the restuarant. Yes, we were full. But who can turn down a Cold Stone Creamery offer? Not me!

We finally arrived back home around 9:30. It was a nice trip, but good to be back home.