Thursday, October 21, 2010 (Myrtle Beach, SC)

I had my usual start to the day...up early, with my coffee, writing yesterdays entry into our travel journal. Steve got up about an hour after me, showered and by the time he sat down with his morning coffee, I was just about finished writing. Then it’s his turn to read what I have written and add his two-cents worth (and correct any grammatical/spelling errors....my brain is much faster than my fingers...that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!!) while I shower.

After breakfast, we decided to take the laptop up to the free WiFi area and research campgrounds in the Hilton Head Island area. We had settled on Edisto Beach State Park but after asking a few questions when I called to book, I found out that they do not give any refunds should we need to leave early. The cell/internet coverage is also questionable. With Mom’s current condition, we need to be able to leave on short notice...and it’s also imperative that we have cell/internet coverage, have access to storage facilities for our rig and be fairly close to a major airport so that we can fly home. So after thinking it all through and coming up with these conclusions, we needed to research southern South Carolina a bit more.

But before doing that, we decided to go for a drive. After a quick stop at Walmart, we drove south down the highway to Murrells Inlet. A very cool little place with lots of taverns, bars and restaurants...obliviously a tourist kind of place. Mind you the whole area is very touristy having 60 miles of beautiful beach and ocean! On the way back, we found the ocean front road that goes through the communities of Garden City and Surfside Beach and saw some beautiful beach houses. On the southern end of Garden City there is a peninsula that has homes on both sides...on the west side, they look across the inlet to Murrells Inlet and on the east side, the wide open Atlantic Ocean. I took lots of pictures............

Back home, we had a quick lunch and then went back up to the free WiFi area to continue researching our next stop. Although it would be more costly, we decided we needed to find a private RV park central to the area we wanted to explore but also had good internet connection, RV storage, was fairly close to a major city and would refund should we needed to leave early. We finally decided on Point South KOA which is by a town called Yemassee, SC about a 3 ½ hour drive south from here. It is also about 50 miles from Savannah, Georgia. With reservations made for our arrival tomorrow, we went back to the trailer...by this time it was nearly 3:00 p.m. and we wanted to get out for a walk on the beach.

We had never been out on the beach at this time of day and found there were lots of families out enjoying the sand, water and sunshine...plus a few fisher people. We walked south to the Surfside Beach Pier and took a few pictures.

We were back at 4:00 p.m. just in time for an ice cold beer....boy that tasted good! We were both very hot after our one hour power walk in the sun! We sought out some shade in our site...we have a huge tree but it hangs over the 5th wheel and is in the wrong spot to provide much shade to the rest of the site during the heat of the day.

After dinner and dishes, I walked back up to the WiFi area to check email and to post yesterday’s blog (I had meant to do it this morning but got too wrapped up in campground research and forgot). I chatted with Chris on MSN...I find it great for just quick updates and hellos. Just as I was finishing up the blog posting, my brother, Dwight, Skype-called me. I had a bit of a difficult time hearing him due to the loud music and all the other people around but we managed. Skype is free when both parties have it installed (also free) on their PC’s and is a great way of keeping in touch...particularly when you are retired, on a fixed income and having to watch those pennies!!

After a great chat with Dwight, I headed back to the trailer. As usual, we watched a bit of TV and then headed to bed.