The beach is coooooool. Maybe not today, with Hurricane Alex on the prowl, but it is a very nice place to be usually. That link will take you to the Charleston paper, where it is still called a tropical storm. It was upgraded to hurricane status overnight.
We arrived at Cherry Grove Beach (just north of Myrtle Beach) around suppertime Friday night. We threw down a few snacks and hit the sand right away. It was not very crowded and the tide was high. It's cool how you don't need a lot of toys to have fun. Just stand in the water and throw yourself backwards over the waves as they come. Taylor and his friend Preston spent more time digging holes in the beach than in the water. Nate stayed in the water most of the time. After an hour or so at the beach we went back to the house and had a big sandwich smorgasbord and pretty much hit the sack right away. The beach house looks pretty bad on the outside, with peeling paint and it's a little saggy. But our friend Chris has rehabbed the inside and it seriously rivals many of the nicer lake cabins where we've stayed in the past.
Saturday we didn't really go down to the water until close to noon. It was very hot so we only stayed a couple hours. There was a constant, moderately strong wind (which we now know was the beginning of the tropical depression), so we stayed reasonably cool. But I warned the kids to stay close to the edge because I felt the undertow was much stronger than the night before. Chris reminded me that part of that would be the tropical depression, but also part was due to the fact that the tide was going out.
Later in the afternoon, the boys relaxed with their playstation and the three adults and Chris's 14 month-old granddaughter went looking for fudge. We hit the Tanger outlet mall in North Myrtle Beach and found just what we had in mind. Chris also got some birthday gift shopping down. After that, we picked up the other kids and took them to Calabash to a seafood joint and then mini golfing. So we were only on the beach once on Saturday. By this time we had passing showers off and on all day and when you consider that every time you go to the water you have to come back and shower, you want to be sure you can stay there for a while.
Sunday Chris and I went down to the water with the kids while Mom stayed back and cleaned. We got a pretty good hit of rain while down there, and the undertow was much worse than the day before. The lifeguards were down very close to the edge of the water and trying very hard to keep swimmers in very close to the beach. It felt pretty dangerous, but our kids mostly dug holes in the sand anyway. We still managed to get an hour in before it was time to leave. Chris had to be back for a birthday party and I had to report to the bus garage Monday by 7 am.
We'll definitely go back there very often. Chris only charges $65/night for her house and it takes about 4 hours to get there. I can now see why so many people leave for the beach so many weekends each year.
Yesterday I learned the "Pre-Trip Inspection" for the Commercial Driver's License. It took me about 4 hours of just rote recitation of bus parts and their condition and the safety check. I have to schedule my test next. I'm hoping to do that tomorrow so I can enjoy the rest of the week before school starts Monday. I would like to drive the bus and go over the pre-trip one more time before testing, too. This morning I go for orientation, so hopefully I'll find out more about my hours, pay and other stuff.
I leave you with this...and there are only 8 more days of repeating it...Don't Buy Benchcraft Furniture!
7:26:22 AM 
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