On October 7th we made the drive from Cliffs of the Neuse State Park in North Carolina to Myrtle Beach State Park in South Carolina. The drive was supposed to take about 3 hours and 20 minutes but with gas stops it ended up taking about 3 hours and 45 minutes…but somehow it went really fast and was actually really fun. I usually use travel days to catch up on phone calls and then listen to “The Office Ladies” podcast but I just felt like some music therapy was needed so Harley and I enjoyed blaring our favorite songs and singing along for most of the trip. Well, I enjoyed it. I don’t think Harley was impressed with my singing.
We got to our spot and John backed the house in on the first try. The site is very narrow and extremely close to our neighbors but the park is really pretty, our site is shady and cool, and we have full hook ups, 50 amp electric, and great phone/internet signal. We did discover pretty quickly after arrival that there is a biker rally in town this weekend so the park was absolutely packed full but we figured (and were right) that it cleared out a lot after Monday morning.
After getting set up, we headed out for a bite to eat. We found a nice little bar called The Goat and enjoyed some simple bar food in a really casual environment. It was a really nice time, pretty tasty, and CHEAP! We also visited one of the many candy stores around town and stocked up on pink, blue and purple Frooties and a wide variety of gummy bears and taffy.
After dinner and candy shopping, we decided to head back to the park and check out the beach. Myrtle Beach State Park is right on the coast and has a huge beach, a fishing pier, walking trails, and the camp ground where we are staying. It’s less than $40 per night and we couldn’t be happier with the location.
We had been told by several people that shark teeth often wash up on shore so we set about looking for some. While we didn’t find any teeth, we did find some really pretty shells and sea glass and started a little collection of treasures for this trip. John wandered off (which is pretty normal for us) and brought me back a dead jellyfish that he had found and picked up with a stick. After giving the poor corpse a burial at sea (after poking it several times and taking some photos), it’s ghost put a curse on John and took revenge by making John drop his cellphone in the ocean while he was wading. Thankfully, he was able to catch it before it washed away and it seems to be working fine after drying out.
On Sunday we drove to a small village called Murrell’s Inlet and walked a small boardwalk along the marsh. Once upon a time, pirates like Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were supposedly active in this area and would sail in and out of the waterways along the coast. Now, it’s full of bars and restaurants – which the pirates would probably still enjoy.
We drove back into Myrtle Beach and down to the main strip and visited the boardwalk. We grabbed some ice cream from Mad Myrtle’s and browsed the – “unique” – souvenirs at the Gay Dolphin. We also found a section with multiple volleyball courts and watched a few games. We found a large arcade and decided to play a few games. We had a blast! My favorite arcade game is Skee-Ball and they had a couple different styles and we played all of them! I also really like the basketball shooting games so we played those a few times, too. I also had my fortune told by a Zoltar machine!
John watches a guy on YouTube that is insanely good at arcade games so he tested out a few of that guy’s methods and did pretty well at this game that drops 50 balls into rotating buckets and you have to catch as many as you can. He ended up catching more than 45 each time he played but couldn’t quite hit all 50. He also found this baseball game that was like a pinball machine but not quite- you hit a button and the ball released like it was being pitched and you moved the bumper to hit it like a bat. In the “field” there were holes for Single, Double, Out, Sacrifice, etc. and there was a little diorama where players would move around the bases according to whatever you scored. You played until you got three outs – I got outs on my first three balls but John ran up 9 runs on his best game.
We ended up with a little over 250 tickets and went to the prize counter to redeem them for a fabulous, life-changing prize. We had earned enough to get a bag of Skittles. We decided that it wasn’t worth it for us so we gave the tickets to a kid who was playing one of the video games nearby so he could add that to his total and we left smiling and feeling pretty good.
We spent the evening at the beach again- but this time we took Harley. She absolutely LOVES ponds and streams and lakes as you may remember from previous entries. We weren’t sure how she would like the sand and the waves, though, so we were excited to have this new experience with her. She was really into it at first- running in the sand and chasing after pigeons and seagulls. We ran along the edge of the water but she kept trying to drink it. We tried to get her out into the waves a little bit but she didn’t seem to like the changing water levels and every time a wave hit she would run back up the beach to safety. After a while, John took her back to the house and then the two of us enjoyed the rest of the night picking up shells and playing in the water.
I also got some great photos of some of the local birds including a great shot of one flying overhead. I watched an osprey dive down to the water and come up with fish. It was such a beautiful evening.
On Monday night after John got off work, we decided to head back over to the main part of the park and visit the fishing pier. Another person staying in the park told us that they saw sharks and dolphins swimming there when they visited over the weekend. There were a lot of people there fishing and we made friends with a few. They let us know that they were fishing for pompano and Spanish mackerel and showed us some of their catch. We watched them reel in a few and they shared information about the local wildlife, how to prepare the fish that they were catching, and fun things in the area. One man started cleaning their catch and called me over when he threw the scraps back into the ocean and I got to see a few sharks coming to feed! We also saw some more birds and a whole lot of jellyfish swimming by.
On Tuesday morning, John introduced me to a new neighbor that he had discovered – a HUGE orb weaver spider that built a web in a tree at the edge of our site. John had been walking Harley in the middle of the night when he walked straight into the web. He isn’t usually afraid of spiders but running into a giant web with one of the biggest spiders we have ever seen living in it wasn’t the most fun time he has ever had.
Tuesday evening we drove about 30 minutes south of our park to another gorgeous place – Huntington Beach State Park. We took Harley with us and she really enjoyed exploring. The park has a marsh area with a boardwalk, grassy land that holds Atalaya Castle along with campgrounds and visitors centers, and the beach.
We started off in the middle grassy section and walked Harley around Atalaya Castle. This enormous house was the winter home of sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and construction was completed in the early 1930’s. The house was last used by the Huntington family in 1947 and the entire 2500 acre grounds were leased to the state parks beginning in 1960. The house was closed when we got there but tours are available at certain dates and times.
From the “castle”, a beautiful sandy path leads through a line of trees and out onto the beach. We spent a little time walking along the shore and looking for shells but Harley isn’t a big fan of the beach and we had more park to see so we left after about 20 minutes.
The marsh section of the park was absolutely stunning. There used to be a long boardwalk going across it but, sadly, it suffered catastrophic damage during Hurricane Ian in 2022 so we were only able to walk on a small portion of it that had been replaced. The views were still incredible, though. We saw so many birds and even spotted a blue crab hiding just under the surface of the water.
On Wednesday night we stopped by Warbird Park while out running errands. This was a small, roadside park a few minutes from our campground and had several small monuments to honor our veterans and the lives lost in the 9/11 attacks. We also saw several airplanes that had once flown from the nearby air field. Military operations have since ceased at this field but these monuments remain.
On Thursday afternoon, we went out for lunch at a really delicious buffet that had all you can eat hibachi, sushi, and Chinese food for $11.99. We ate until we thought we were going to explode! We also found a comic shop and picked up another Firefly comic and two Funko Pops that brought back memories of our childhood. Then we went home to watch The Great British Baking Show because we were too full of food to live.
We spent our final day relaxing at the house. We absolutely loved our week in Myrtle Beach! I don’t think John expected to enjoy this stop at all but he agreed that it was a really great week and that the scenery was gorgeous. I wish that we had longer but our next stop is Savannah, Georgia and I am so excited about visiting there as well.
