Charleston, SC

Sunday the 12th, Bill and I drove into Charleston, SC to visit Patriot Point Naval and Maritime Museum as well as to check out historic downtown Charleston.

Patriot Point is home to the USS Yorktown (aircraft carrier), DD-724 Destroyer Laffey, Coast Guard Cutter Ingham, and the SS-343 Submarine Clamagore. We walked through all of them, although they weren’t set up as nice or as informative as the Alabama was. At the Point they also have a mock-up of a PBR Vietnam Base Camp.

The Yorktown was probably the most informative of all the ships, they have different tours you can take and the Hangar deck is set up as a museum. In the hangar deck they have several displays including aircraft and some memorials. Probably the best set up they have is the Medal of Honor Hall, it’s nicely done. We don’t have any pics of the Hall, when you walk in it’s very quiet with an almost reverent feel to it.

On the Flight deck of the Yorktown they have some various different aircraft set up, again without any explanation of what they are or what the significance of them are. However, Bill read in the paper a bit about the F-14 Tomcat that I thought was pretty cool. The day that we visited the Yorktown and saw this F-14, was the same day that the last two combat squadrons of F-14s were returning to Norfolk to be decommissioned. The F-14 Tomcat will never again fly a combat mission. They are being replaced by the F-18 Hornet, the jet’s that the Blue Angels currently fly. I thought that was pretty cool.

After tooling around Patriots Point we drove through Historic Downtown Charleston. Other than some of the most beautiful houses that I’ve ever seen (that are private residences that you can’t walk around) I don’t really see the draw to this area. You have to find parking (good luck) than walk around the area and deal with crowds to really see it, we opted not to deal with that and just drove around. Neither Bill nor I really like large groups of people just to find out that really the only thing there was shopping and eating.

On our way out of Charleston we stopped at the KOA that we had originally stopped at and only stayed the overnight before pulling out and heading into Myrtle Beach. This is the sign I saw while standing right on the water line of the lake…that rules!

We returned to Myrtle Beach very glad, on multiple levels, that we decided to leave Charleston and stay at the Beach instead. We’ve really been enjoying Myrtle Beach and will gladly return here if we ever find ourselves on this side and in this part of the country again.

;-)K

Atlantic Coast

We arrived in Myrtle Beach on March 9th, set up relaxed, drove around the area trying to find the stuff we would need while we where here. The 10th was my first ever day on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean. Bill snapped this picture of me while I was picking up a rock or shell or something. Shortly after he snapped a pic of both of us from arms length.

The Atlantic Coast is SO much different than the Pacific in so many ways. It’s extremely developed, really crowded in the public areas and mildly crowded in the private areas. The beach we are on is considered private, there is no public access, and only people staying in the resort along the coast have access to our portion of the beach. We are very close to the beach where we are parked; you could through a baseball from our house to the sand. We’ve spent a good portion of time so far walking on the beach, it was a bit of a novelty for me to be able to stand in the surf and let the water wash over my feet and not have them turn blue. The average water temperature for this time of year is about 70 degrees, whereas the Pacific is like 40…BBRRR. Bill thought it was funny for someone who grew up around the water to have that be a novelty, for which I looked at him and asked, “Do you remember how cold the Pacific is? The Puget Sound isn’t much better.” We did run into a character on one of our walks…this guy wasn’t giving up ground at all, we almost stepped on him. The seagulls here are about the size of crows in the Pacific NW, roughly half the size of the seagulls you see in Washington and Oregon.

All in all I’m really enjoying the Myrtle Beach area. The place we are staying is more family oriented so whereas there are a lot of people here for spring break, we’ve so far (knock on wood) avoided the drunken, rowdy college kids.

The same day we took these pictures we had an awesome dinner at a restaurant called SeaFare. It’s an all you can eat buffet, but is so much nicer than any buffet style restaurant I’ve ever been to. You are seated by your server who brings you your drinks and keeps cleaning your table and refilling your drinks. Their buffet was full of awesome food. I stuffed myself with crab legs, crab cakes; crab stuffed portabellas…are you seeing a trend? They had live music and a live mermaid in a pool; the buffet itself was shaped like a ship complete with masts and rigging, really a neat place. If you find yourself in Myrtle Beach, eat at SeaFare and ask to be seated in Betsy’s area.

That’s all for now, it’s beautiful here in the mid to upper 70s most days.
;-)K