Myrtle Beach '12

So, in mid-September we took a couple days and took a mid-week trip to Myrtle Beach (or more specifically, North Myrtle Beach). It's a touristy kind of place we wouldn't have chosen a few years ago, but lots of fun with little kids.

We left home after breakfast on Tuesday, and arrived at the coast just in time for lunch. We headed to Broadway at the Beach, which is a boardwalk-y area of shops and attractions in the city of Myrtle Beach. The girls liked these pirates at the restaurant.

Then a trip to Ripley's Aquarium.

Octopus:

Starfish:

Petting tank of horseshoe crabs, which the girls refused to touch:

Sharks!

Tank o' rays--theoretically you could pet them, but they weren't into being petted this day:

I like how you can always tell which of my kids is which, even in silhouette:

Then we drove north about fifteen minutes to check into our hotel in North Myrtle Beach. The view from our window:

And immediately down to check out the the beach before dinner!

You can see the look on Hazel's face here as she's just gotten her first taste of the whole ocean grabbing at her toes.

Geoff explaining that each of those little holes has a clam beneath it. Digging up clams and then watching them burrow themselves back down into the sand was one of our favorite beach activities.

Cora has to chase the birds of course:

The next morning we spent at the hotel pool and then walked out to the beach for a bit. I didn't get a lot of pictures of that.The girls played with a little Canadian girl named Autumn.

Lunch with an ocean view.

In the afternoon we went to Barefoot Landing, which is another tourist folderol, this time in North Myrtle Beach. We fed pellets from a machine to alarmingly large fish:

Went on the carousel:

Saw saltwater taffy being made:

(It was their idea to dress alike, not mine.)

T.I.G.E.R.S Preservation Station:

September was a nice time to visit. You could definitely picture this place in the high nineties and packed with people, but we were glad to have it in the seventies to eighties with a bit of elbow room.

Some more beach time at sundown. This was so nice. It's true that the ocean is soothing.

The second night we ordered pizza in and ate in the hotel suite. The third and final morning we got up and went out to the beach early with our buckets and shovels and stuff and did our sandcastle-building and our shell-collecting, but I didn't have the camera with me. We checked out and headed home right after lunch. 

Here's Cora toying with a shark at lunch just before we left. 

 

All in all a good little trip. I think this is the first vacation-for-the-sake-of-vacation we've taken as a family of four. I see more good trips ahead of us.