Road Trip to Myrtle Beach, Day 1

Dennis and I woke up at 4:00am to get dressed and everything into the car for our 14 hour road trip to South Carolina. We woke the boys and were on the road by 5:00am - we both hoped they would sleep for at least part of the drive, but our kids don't tend to sleep in the car.

By 9:00am, we were in Morgantown, West Virginia. We stopped for breakfast at a McDonald's there, which had a nice little outdoor playground. The kids burned off some energy, and we all ate and were back on the road fairly quickly.

The drive down was absolutely gorgeous. The redbud trees were in full bloom, as were the wild dogwoods. As we traveled south, the trees became greener and the flowers more plentiful. The mountains in West Virginia are spectacular, and going through the mountains meant there was no traffic to contend with. Our GPS wanted us to drive through Washington, D.C. and down the I-95, but our GPS is also insane. The amount of traffic in the Capitol would have made that drive a living nightmare. Instead of loads of traffic, we had this to look at:

We stopped for lunch somewhere in the far western corner of Virginia, and continued on our drive. The I-77 goes through two really neat tunnels at the West Virginia/Virginia border, and the kids really loved that part of the drive.

I had brought the tablet computer, toys for the kids (arranged in 2-gallon sized ziplock bags, which was great because the bag doubled as a garbage container), and the DVD player. The DVD player was the best thing for Nolan by far - he is only four so his attention span is limited. I had picked up a He-Man DVD from Walmart for $5 - it had seven hours of cartoons and ran on a loop. The child was in cartoon heaven for most of the ride down!

The longest part of the drive was through North Carolina and South Carolina - we were definitely ready to be at our destination, but still had about 5 hours to go. Once in South Carolina, the highway system is disrupted and you have to drive on smaller roads with stoplights, so that makes the drive a little more exhausting. We pulled into the Seawatch Plantation at 7:30pm (our sister and brother-in-law gave us their timeshare points for Christmas - best present ever, by the way). On an interesting side-note, Matt didn't fall asleep until we were only 15 minutes away from the hotel.

Nolan never really fell asleep. Impressive for a four year old child who has been up since 5:00am!

Since it was getting late, we held off on the check-in process and went to get dinner. Fortunately, we beat a large school group arriving at the Steak and Shake - we zipped in, got a table, and ate some burgers and shakes.

We checked into the hotel and used a luggage cart to get our suitcases to the 12th floor. We had a two-bedroom, ocean-front condo with a balcony right over the ocean. The sun had already set, but the sound and the smell of the ocean was fantastic. The boys couldn't wait to see the ocean, so we took a little walk down to the pool area and the beach.

We collapsed into bed that night and were excited to play on the beach the next day!