Living Our Dream

More Myrtle Beach 2009

2009-11-11T21:12:53-05:00

More Myrtle Beach 2009

We spent 11 days in Myrtle Beach this year. Our stay is always limited because we wait to arrive until winter rates to kick in on November 1, and they have a rally at Ocean Lakes around the second full weekend in November every year. We think it's a free (or at least heavily discounted) weekend for anyone who has bought an RV from the dealership owned by Ocean Lakes. The campground sets aside large blocks of sites (especially the sites along the ocean), so it's hard to get reservations near the ocean for that weekend unless you purchased your RV from Ocean Lakes. It's just as well because it's usually starting to cool off, and it's time for us to be heading south anyway.

We had good weather most of the time we were in Myrtle Beach. It was cool and cloudy the first full day we were there, but it cleared out; and we had bright sun and temperatures in the upper 60s and lower 70s most of time we were there. We didn't do any sightseeing; but we shared dinners with our friends, Barbara and Dick, and we went out to dinner one night to Outback Steakhouse to celebrate Dick's birthday. We rode our bikes around Ocean Lakes and looked at the beach houses on the property. We hung out around the motor home and relaxed, watched the NASCAR race on Sunday and watched the Steelers beat Denver on Monday Night Football.

We also spent some time on the beach. While sitting on the beach, Paul sometimes reads; and he sometimes likes to watch any passing boats and the gulls and sandpipers. The gull in the next photo seemed to be strutting along the beach.

Paul, who is usually an early riser, likes to watch the sunrise over the water at Myrtle Beach. Most days he just watches from the window of the motor home while working on the computer and sipping coffee, but he tries to get out onto the beach at least once to watch the sunrise in person.

Sunset at the beach is pretty, too. Even though the sun is behind you, it makes the sky over the ocean glow purple, pink, and orange. The next photo is looking northeast up the beach toward downtown Myrtle Beach.

Sunrise and sunset are also good times to watch the shore birds heading out from or back to their roosts. The brown pelican in the photo below is heading home for the night.

As we said, the weather was gorgeous for most of our stay. Although the number of hurricanes drops drastically after the middle of October and hurricane season is officially over on November 1, we watched the weather reports as they tracked a rare November hurricane (Hurricane Ida) as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico. Fortunately, it was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it came ashore early Tuesday morning south of Summerdale, AL, where we had been staying a few weeks ago. We got an email from the new friends we met at Rainbow Plantation, and they said it was a little windy and they got a lot of rain, but there was no major damage.

Fortunately for us, Ida was quickly downgraded further from a tropical storm to a tropical depression because the outlying bands of rain were headed toward Myrtle Beach well before the center of the storm came ashore. Unfortunately for us, the storm slowed down, sat over the Florida Panhandle, combined with a few other fronts and weather systems, and pumped moisture from the Gulf of Mexico northward for a couple of days. We watched the clouds increase on Monday. It rained off and on Tuesday, and our friends, Barbara and Dick headed for home a day early hoping to be ahead of the heaviest rain. We stayed put. Later on in the day, the winds picked up a bit, the skies got dark, and the surf became a little more angry-looking.

Then on Wednesday morning the skies opened up. The wind got a little stronger, and it poured for a couple of hours. Paul took the photo below of our site from across the road during a brief halt in the rain. The low spot in the road had collected about 8 or 10 inches of water.

Contrast the next photo of the ocean looking northward toward downtown Myrtle Beach with the one above taken at sunset several days prior. There was a lot of debris and there were many broken seashells on the beach.

We tried to extend our stay by a day to give the rain more time to clear, but our site and most of the ones around us were booked because of the rally we mentioned earlier. Since we would have had to move way to the back of the campground anyway, we decided to take our chances with the weather and head south as we originally planned. Check back for our next post and we'll let you know where we landed.

Myrtle Beach 2009

2009-11-04T17:41:00-05:00

Myrtle Beach 2009

By the time we left the Mobile area, the weather had cooled off and warmed back up again two or three times. We visited Bellingrath Gardens over in Mobile last spring (click HERE and HERE to read out two posts about Bellingrath Gardens from 2008), and we wanted to see the gardens again in the fall. However, the warming of the weather toward the end of our stay when we planned to go to Bellingrath brought with it clouds and a chance of rain every day, so we decided to save a fall visit for another time.

It was about 700 miles from where we were staying in Summerdale to our next destination in Myrtle Beach, so we decided to break the trip down to three days of driving. After about a four-hour drive, we stayed the first night at Leisure Time Campground near Auburn, AL. The roads at Leisure Time were paved, and pads were a combination of gravel and dirt. They had full hookups with 30/50-amp electric and cable with a limited number of channels. The photo below shows our site at Leisure Time Campground.

The campground is built on a hillside, so some of the sites aren't real level. The hillside overlooks a municipal park with four ball fields, and there were several games going on in the evening when we were there. Fortunately, the the games weren't noisy, and the lights were out and everyone was gone before 10:00 PM. However, we could hear the traffic noise from the nearby interstate all night.

After another four-hour drive, we stopped for the second night at Flynn's Inn Camping Village. Flynn's is an older campground that is located a little south of Augusta, GA on U. S. Highway 25. Highway 25 is four lanes, and it's a busy road. Our site was only a couple hundred feet from the road, and there is no barrier of any kind - no shrubs, no fence, and no buildings - to block the traffic noise. Flynn's has full hookups, and a few sites have 50-amp electric. The main road is paved, but it is very rough and uneven. The sites are mostly grass. The next photo shows our site at Flynn's Inn Camping Village.

We usually don't like to drive three days in a row, so we scheduled two nights at Flynn's. While in the Augusta area, we checked out a Corps of Engineers campground north of the city. It was a nice campground; but as we suspected, it turned out there were way too many trees for good satellite reception.

We also stopped to visit one of Margery's former coworkers from back in Pittsburgh. It was great catching up with Andy and Liz Reid along with their children (l-r) Helen, Noah, Sam. This very talented family has an author, composer, and sports fanatic among their children.

The next morning, we had another drive of a little over four hours to Myrtle Beach. We discovered Ocean Lakes Campground in Myrtle Beach our first year of full-timing, and we have returned every fall since. Ocean Lakes is a large campground with hundreds of sites and beach houses. In the summer, there are activities (especially for kids and teens) and special events like concerts, a golf cart parade, and a craft fair. The campground is so big, it's almost like a small city. We hear things can be a little zooey in summer; but by fall, things quiet down quite a bit and the lower winter rates kick in November 1.

Ocean Lakes has paved roads and full hookups including 30/50-amp electric and cable. Wi-Fi is available at extra cost. Many of the sites are paved, and they continue to pave even more every year during the off-season. The paved sites cost $5 more a night, so we always chose an unpaved site in the past. Early this year, we got a letter stating the site we had reserved had been paved and the price would be going up. We had the option of calling the reservation desk if we wanted to change to a lower cost, unpaved site, but we decided to keep the paved site. The pavement is really nice to keep the sand out of the rig in spite of the higher cost, and we didn't want to give up our site which is just two back from the beach. The photo below shows our site at Ocean Lakes.

Our friends from North Carolina, Barbara and Dick, were going to be returning home from Jekyll Island about the time we were planning to be in Myrtle Beach, so they made reservations for a site near us at Ocean Lakes for a few days. We originally met Barbara and Dick last year in Davenport, IA, and we look forward to when our paths cross. The last time we saw them was last winter when they visited us at Blueberry Hill RV Resort in Bushnell, FL.

Our first full day in Myrtle Beach was cool and cloudy which precluded riding bikes or sitting on the beach to chat, so we all piled in their car and drove over to a shopping area called Broadway at the Beach. Broadway at the Beach is a collection of about 40 or 50 shops, a couple dozen restaurants and snack shops, and a number of entertainment venues. The shops are laid out around a lagoon and there are sections that have different themes such as Caribbean, New England, and Charleston. The whole thing has a little of the flavor of Disney's Epcot.

It was a cool, dreary weekday so it wasn't very crowded as you can see from the next photo.

We strolled around a while checking out some of the shops. Barbara bought some gifts for her grandkids, and Paul was attracted to a shop selling saltwater taffy. We are still watching our carbs, but we couldn't resist buying a few pieces of taffy. Yum!

And, of course, we couldn't pass up the opportunity for a tourist photo.

So far, we're just having a good time hanging out, sharing dinners, and visiting with Barbara and Dick. You never know what else will turn up, so stay tuned.