This is the first post in a series of blog entries I wrote while we were on vacation at Myrtle Beach
Day 1
After a lot of packing and double checking The List the night before, the day was finally here to leave for vacation to North Myrtle Beach. The List was our list of things we needed to bring, mainly for Landon. It was a pretty extensive list and the amount of luggage he had versus our luggage showed it. When I was able to get it all packed into the car, the back of the 4Runner was full. We had originally planned to take the Accord, but we realized quickly that wasn’t going to happen and had to use the 4Runner.
The time had arrived. The car was packed and everything was taken care of inside the house for our trip. The next stop was Jason’s house where we were meeting up with Christi’s parents, Jason, and his girlfriend Lynn. Because we had a lot of stuff to bring, we had to take 2 cars on the trip. Christi, Landon and I drove with Jason and Lynn in our car while Mike and Debra drove their car, which also had a lot of Landon’s stuff in it.
We had hoped to leave around 7:15am, but ended up leaving around 7:45am. This is important because Landon normally eats around 8:30-9am. The plan was to drive as far as we could before Landon had to eat breakfast. About 20 minutes into the trip, we had to make an emergency stop because Lynn was sick. We thought it was what she ate for dinner the night before, but within the next hour we stopped 4 more times because she was car sick. Thankfully she was feeling better after our last stop, which was right before we had to get onto I-20.
Around this point, it was time for Landon to eat breakfast. You wouldn’t know it, though, because he was passed out in the car seat. Christi, who was sitting in the back seat with him, had to wake Landon up to feed him his breakfast. This was a little scary because we had fed Landon twice in the car seat, but not in the car. That is, we had been out before and had to use his car seat as his high chair and the results were not great. We were prepared to stop somewhere and use the portable high chair, but we were going to attempt feeding him in the car seat while driving. Christi made his cereal and got his fruit ready to eat. I told her to let me know if we need to pull over, and she said she would. About 10 minutes later I asked how he was doing, because I had not heard anything. She responded by saying he just finished his breakfast and is taking his bottle. This was awesome because he did a great job eating his food and we were able to continue traveling while he ate.
After about 1 hour of playing in the backseat, Landon passed out. Soon after, the rest of the car (except me of course) did the same. Maybe it was the fact that I was traveling as the only person awake in the car, but that stretch of I-20 was possibly the most boring stretch of road I had driven. We got on the road around Eatonton and I couldn’t decide if I-16 or I-20 was more boring, so that should give you an idea of how boring it was. I mean, I even came up with pros and cons for the boringness campaign for each road. I-20 at least had a few big cities on our way (Augusta, Columbia) and some decent exits, but it was a much further drive that I-16. I’ll call it a tie.
After several hours traveling and a lunch and bathroom stop, we made it within 80 miles of Myrtle Beach. Unfortunately, the entire southeast had too. Traffic was terrible on highway 501, which goes directly into Myrtle Beach. After about 1 hour of bumper to bumper traffic without going faster than 30 (in a 55), we came to the bypass that took us close to North Myrtle Beach. This was great because we could finally get going again and we were all ready to get out of the car.
Finally, at around 4pm, we arrived at our condo. The place we stayed is called the MarVista Grande. It was looked very nice from the outside, but when we got into our room, we were amazed. The place was beautiful and we were all impressed with condo. Everything looked brand new and it was much larger than I expected. Once we were all unpacked and rested, we went out to eat dinner and explore the area some. We ate at a restaurant in Barefoot Landing and it was good. We didn’t last too long, though, because we all pretty tired from the trip. Overall, it was a great day because 1. Landon did amazingly well traveling since he did not fuss 1 time during the whole trip and we were able to feed him while traveling 2. We were in Myrtle Beach on a trip we have been looking forward to for a long time, and 3. We had a week to relax and unwind on the beach.
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