We made our reservations at Myrtle Beach State Park many months ago, as this is a very popular place to be during the summer months. We were a little underwhelmed with our camping site, tucked in the woods with over 300 other sites. It took some very skilled driving to get our big motor home down the single lane roads crowded with bicycling children and people carrying all their beach gear.
We were especially underwhelmed to find out that one of our shade trees was a messy mulberry, with berries littered all over our site. We knew that mulberries are notorious for staining carpet and furniture, so Mark swept the area with a dried palmetto branch. Denisa came to like that tree much better when she realized that it was also a natural bird feeder. The cardinals and blue jays frequented our camp site often to nibble on these fruity treats.
As soon as we had the motor home settled into its spot, we headed down to the beach. It's an easy walk through a crowded campground to get to the wide expanse of sand. But we were sad to see that there were almost no shells on the beach.
At our state park we are removed from the hustle and bustle of the high rise section of Myrtle Beach, but we could see it up close when we walked a couple miles north.
We walked down to the pier for a picture showing the long expanse of wood supports that hold it up against the force of the waves.
We were surprised to see several young guys intently digging in the sand for something. When we asked what they were finding, they were happy to show us their catch. These are sand fleas, and they will use them for fish bait. We had heard of sand fleas before, but we envisioned them to be the size of dog fleas. We were a little horrified at their size, and we found out that they can leave giant red welts when they bite humans.
We actually arrived a day earlier to Myrtle Beach than planned because we had special guests to pick up at the airport. The good news is the airport is very close to the state park. The bad news is that we can hear those big jets as they take off and land right over our heads.
It was just 2.6 miles from our park to the the Myrtle Beach airport to pick up our youngest son, Blake and his girl friend, Claire. This is the easiest airport shuttle ever! They were wearing matching t-shirts with eagles on them. They were humming the song from the Space Jam soundtrack, "I want to to fly like an eagle, to the sea" in anticipation of their flight to the ocean.
We picked them up from a 10:38 p.m. flight, and it was close to midnight by the time we got back to the state park. They didn't want to wait until the next morning to get their feet in the sand, so we headed to the beach for a night-time stroll.
The next morning we were back to the beach again. But this time we headed up the highway to North Myrtle Beach for our first day. You can see that the beach is deep with lots of good sand for walking, but we spent most of the day playing in the waves. After going to different water parks throughout the years, we have determined that God made the best wave pool ever!
They brought a ball, so we played some volleyball on the beach. We have found that Denisa is a better player without that darn net in her way.
Now that we have seen the midnight beach, and the afternoon beach, we only had one more beach time on our list. So we woke up the next morning at 5:30 a.m. to get the sun rise beach.
Blake and Mark weren't sure if they wanted to wake up so early for our sun rise adventure. It was barely light enough to see to take the short walk from our camp site to the beach. But right on time, the sun peeked over the pier. You can tell that Denisa and Claire were more excited about this sunrise walk. You can see the two females walking far up the beach to greet the sun while Mark and Blake are dragging their feet far behind us.
By 6:10 a.m. the sun was rising quickly into the sky over the Atlantic. We stayed on the beach for a few minutes, wandering His wonders for a few more minutes.
Then we made the short walk back to the motor home, where it didn't take us long to get back to sleep. This is the first time we have made two extra beds in our motor home, but we are glad to see that we can use the couch for one bed, and the sofa bed air mattress for another. We are using every inch of the motor home! The four of us are having a great time at the beach, but we are excited that we have even more family coming for more fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment