Remember all those eons ago when I talked about our side trip to Charlotte, NC? Yeah… it’s tough for me to recall, too. Anyway… Charlotte was just a pit stop on the way to our main destination: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. **This is a long post 😉
Just a refresher… in October K and I packed up the car after work and headed to Circleville, OH. We did some Pumpkin Festival fest-ing with my brother and Christina, stayed the night in stormy Lancaster, OH, then took a lap around the NASCAR museum in Charlotte. After dinner at Carolina Ale House we forced ourselves back into the car for the three hour trek to Myrtle Beach. Now you’re all caught up.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I am a Grade-A, award-winning, hall of fame plan-a-holic. I take relaxing vacations and plan them down to the millisecond, squashing any and all spontinuity out of the experience. But this time I didn’t. I didn’t plan one. single. thing. I made note of fun things we could do, but I put no pen to paper, made no reservations, and formed no expectations. All per K’s request.
F R I D A Y
We got in pretty late on Thursday so the adventuring began the following morning.
We stayed at The Horizon at 77th – it was one property off the beach and down a side road from N Kings Highway. Our rooms were in that center section. The hotel was in Myrtle Beach, but on the north side which meant we could venture to North Myrtle without any trouble.
We picked a chilly weekend to visit the beach so we tried to take advantage of the warmest day on the trip. We started off browsing the Tanger Outlets at Hwy 17 and picked up a few Christmas gifts for folks. We also nommed on lunch in the food court and treated ourselves to Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.
It was a breezy 80 degrees by 3pm so we packed up the towels, blanket, and umbrella, and walked to the beach.
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After a few chapters, a stroll along the coast, and a near-fatal wind+umbrella incident we decided to call it a day. I think we spent an hour and a half on the sand. (That’s the risk you take in October, I guess. )
We decided to be a little adventurous and try out some new restaurants on our trip. We made a reservation at Aspen Grille for 6:15pm and got spiffy.
High risk, high reward. Dinner was delicious. It was a slightly expensive meal, but we were 110% satisfied. We ended the night on the couch watching a NatGeo special on Teddy Roosevelt. #excitingtimes
S A T U R D A Y
In hindsight we’ve both decided I should’ve planned something during the trip. Anything, really. We spent the morning at the local Cracker Barrel and then Bass Pro, Books-A-Million (where K bought me two books as a late b-day gift), and a smaller local mall. We also stopped into the Harley shop for K before deciding to visit Boardwalk on the Beach.
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Lunch was at American Tap House where the first conversation in this post happened. K got a burger and I ordered a Thai Chicken Salad.
Lunch was late in the day and after we finished we decided to just lounge around the hotel room.
For dinner K discovered a restaurant called Boom Boom Wine Room. Um. It was the coolest place.
Upon arrival they loaded a debit card with any amount you wanted for use in the wine bottle machines. You could then select different wines in different quantities from the machines. (1, 3, and 5 ounce I think). It awesome!
The food was snack-like and we ordered plates of the short-rib nachos, bruschetta, and “buttered scotch” pudding. Delicious.
S U N D A Y
I am married to an early-rising homebody so by 7:10am we were on the road. We got home without incident before dusk 🙂
. . .
To be totally honest, it was a “meh” trip for us. I’m glad we had the opportunity for downtime together, but we got a little bored. I failed to plan anything fun, we’ve been to Myrtle Beach a handful of times, and there wasn’t much beach-ing. The food was incredible, though!
Do you enjoy traveling in the fall? Have you been to Myrtle Beach? Have you ever taken a trip that didn’t live up to the hype?
Life as Louise 
We don’t usually plan out trips out each day in advanced, but have a list of running things we’d like to do so when we are bored with what we are doing we pick from the list. All of the food places sound fun and that wine room would be so cool!!! I’ve never been to Myrtle Beach. The only Atlantic beach I’ve visited is Tybee Island in GA. Other than that, I tend to stay on the gulf coast in Alabama and Florida.
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The Atlantic coast is definitely more accessible to us. I’ve been there so many times. When I was younger my great-grandma had a condo in MB. I love the little city, but when you can’t chill on the beach for hours and you don’t want to drop hundreds of dollars, you run out of stuff to do pretty quickly…
I wish the gulf was more accessible to us! I’ve heard the beaches there are incredible!
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You had me at wine bottle machine. That’s what I need for my house.
We plan our trips if it’s a place we’ve never been to in order to maximize the time but if we’ve been there before we usually don’t plan much unless there’s a restaurant we want to try and we’ll need a reservation.
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My in-laws are whispering about starting a winery (they already bottle wine) and I took so many pictures so I could show them how cool it was! The owner of the restaurant was so friendly and sweet, too. Overall it was a great experience!
I plan everything… I think we just need to find a happy-medium 🙂
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our big family trip is always in the fall – either sept or oct….we find that’s when the weather is best – not too hot and not too cold. it’s also less busy so that means things are cheaper!
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I LOVE traveling in the fall. I think I just need to be smarter about location. The water is just too chilly in Oct. along the Atlantic in the Carolinas. We need to stick to Caribbean islands or cool mountains.
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It was semi-cruel to post this in January 😉 what a fun trip! I went to college in NC, but one night a friend and I drove down to Charleston for dinner. We stopped in Myrtle Beach on the way. It was raining so I didn’t see a lot, but it looked loaded with stuff to do. Someday I’ll have to explore it!
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Hahaha. After going back and looking at the beach photos I was like, “Daaaaaaang I wish I was there with a book”!
If you’ve never been there or it’s nice and warm there is a TON of stuff to do. We just picked a dud weekend.
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I have not been to Myrtle Beach but would love to! Sorry that the trip was kind of “meh” but I hope that you still enjoyed your time away. For me a lot of trips don’t meet my expectations. I think I’m learning a lot about good and bad travel things (for me) and that it gets better all the time. For example, I don’t LOVE big big cities. I’m not going to never visit them.. but I’ll try to approach it differently, and visit smaller places too! We found one trip where we planned that way (with just a list, but no set plans) that it was pretty great. It depends on the trip, everything can be so different. We’ve had ones like that where we are like… OMG must pick from list… : / haha Hope your next trip is a bit more fun for you! XO – Alexandra
Simply Alexandra: My Favorite Things
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Thanks, friend. The side trip to Charlotte was awesome and we would’ve cancelled our hotel in MB if we could’ve. I think the newness and excitement of Charlotte played into our poor time in MB. Oh well- we had fun and it’s nice to get away for a few days 🙂
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Autumn tends to be my favorite season to travel – especially to national parks when its the off-season. We also went to Berlin in the fall & it was magical!
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I really love to travel in fall. The prices are typically better and the destination are always less crowded. I think we just need to avoid MB in the fall because the beach is just too chilly and we’ve done most of the non-beach things there 🙂
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Girl… I feel ya… We need a support group for wifes married to early risers 😉
I love the wine thing where you get the preloaded card & you can choose. That’s just fun.
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Like, JUST SLEEP IN A LITTLE BIT, DUDE! Ha. I was reading through my travel journal and every day started with, “K got up early and showered/got dressed while I slept in…” Hahaha!
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I like off season travel, and fall is one of my favorite times at the beach – I just wear pants and long sleeves!
I had to LOL at near fatal umbrella incident. Been there.
I am the early riser!
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I love traveling in fall and spring/April, but this trip just fell flat this time. Oh well. It happens 🙂 I think we’re tackling Disney next fall so I have VERY high hopes for that. Lol.
The umbrella was mere inches from my face. It was terrifying. Ha!
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Last year, my family (parents, brother and his family) came to visit me in the end of May. It was colder in LA than it was in MN, which I warned them it would be (mid 60-s vs 80s). So they were cold and the beach was cold … and I warned them! Spring and Fall are iffy times for the beach but it sure looked pretty! And at least the food was good because if I’m being honest, I care more about what I eat than I what I see. 😀
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Ha- the food was GREAT. And we actually got a lot of Christmas shopping done at the outlets and quirky stores. So it wasn’t a total bust. The beach was just a no-go most of the weekend. Oh well. Lol
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Boom Boom Wine Room sounds so fun!!
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It was so unique and so much fun! The owner was super friendly and the food was delicious, too!
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I love traveling in the fall, but it’s because we don’t get fall color, so I am always looking for pretty places that have it! haha. Such a bummer you had a meh trip, but I’m glad you liked the food! That Thai Chicken Salad looks so good!
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No complaints about any of our food!
I really enjoy traveling in the fall, but I think we’re going to stop going to Myrtle at that time. There are too many good places with great weather/scenery where we should spend our falls.
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i HAVE been to myrtle beach. last november i took ten days to tour north carolina. i flew into myrtle beach and rented a car. the last full day of my trip was going to be spent on the beach reading. when i got to myrtle beach, it was raining. on my full day, it was cloudy, so i went back to wilmington, nc, where it was sunny, and spent the day there instead. and wonder of wonders, the sky was CLEAR that morning. here’s two pictures, both in color, of the beach upon arrival at the end of my trek through nc and departure two days later: http://www.smartassdirect.com/2015/11/the-north-and-sout.html
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It’s crazy how quickly the weather can turn and temperatures can change! We set up shop on the beach and sat there for over an hour, but toward the end K kept glancing at the sky and telling me we should pack up. I ignored him for a while, but during our walk back to the hotel we started getting sprinkled on and he just gave me that “told ya” look. Lol. Then it rained pretty hard for an hour or so. Fortunately we were in the room!
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Wait. 10+ hours. You’re so adventurous!!! That sounds like a fun trip! We’ve taken family beach trips to south Jersey in the fall, and it’s nice because the water is still warm! Also. I had no idea NatGeo was an abbrev BUT I LOVE IT!
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We do SO MUCH DRIVING for vacation… Ohio is kind of central to places, but not really. In the spring we drive 6 hours to Bristol, TN, stay a day and a half for the races, and drive 6 hours home in a weekend. My dad is a truck driver so long drives in the car never bother any of us.
I think NatGeo is the abbreviation…? Ha. I just went with it.
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Ah, bit of a bummer that it was a meh trip. Still, a trip is better than no trip 🙂
I do really enjoy travelling in the Autumn though, I like to make the most of the fewer people in Autumn time. It’s always quieter and usually cheaper too, which is always good.
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It’s nice to get my self-employed husband out of his own head sometimes. So yes, a trip is better than no trip 🙂
I’m a fan of fall travel, too. I just need to pick better locations! Ha.
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I’m sorry it was a meh trip but lord, I am so needing a wine bottle machine in my life!! That sounds phenomenal!
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I have never seen anything like it! It was the coolest contraption!
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This. Sounds. 100%. Amazing.
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We ate so many yummy things and spent lots of relaxing quality time together- so I guess it was pretty amazing 🙂
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This is kind of funny to me, because I want to plan a trip for Jordan, R, and I to go somewhere over a long weekend, and I’m all, “I’ll just book a cabin and we’ll go!” And Jordan was like, “Please find SOMETHING for us to do. Are we just going to wander around for four days?” So this reinforces that I need to make at least a few plans for us before we book it 🙂 But I’m glad you got some beach time!
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When we went to Niagara Falls I scheduled everything- including downtime. Haha. And that was one of my better “relaxing” trips. In Jamaica I could NOT just chill- I kept booking excursions or wanting to take walks. We actually fought about it while in paradise. Hahaha. I swear I’m working on that happy-medium 😉
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i have never been to Myrtle Beach but it’s a popular destination for a few of my friends. i’m with you – i am a plan-a-holic, though i normally don’t plan restaurants (well, i have a bunch in mind but they are backups in case we don’t happen upon something good). KC and I went on a cruise last year and he also requested that I not plan everything because it would be relaxing and a nice change from our normal vacations.. and the things we enjoyed the most were the things i’d planned and KC was like.. okay, no more no-planning-vacations. haha. us planners know what’s what 😉
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Hahahaha! We went to an all-inclusive in Jamaica for a few days and when we arrived we had nothing planned but then I filled our days with resort events and excursions. On the last day K finally flipped and was like, “I’m just going to watch TV in to room because I’m EXHAUSTED.” Lol… Might’ve overdone it with that one 😉
You should check out Myrtle! Go between May and Sept 🙂
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ohh i haven’t been to myrtle beach and i want to go. we recently had a “meh” trip to portland (though that was partially due to weather and sickness) and i realized we don’t usually have many of those ‘meh’ trips. i think it will help us appreciate the next trip we take even more 🙂
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It’s a fun trip, we’ve just been there A LOT.
I’d love to go to Portland 🙂 I think we just need to make sure our trips aren’t just for s’s and g’s. We need to go because we really WANT to go!
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