Myrtle Beach

So we drove from Carolina Beach over to Myrtle Beach State Park, and got here in the afternoon. Even though it's December, there are quite a few people here, including some RVs that look like they're parked here pretty long-term. The campground is just a bunch of loops with electric and water, (and internet!) plus a couple full hookup sites. The beach isn't very far, which is nice. There's a big pier that I guess you can fish off of, and there's a nice view of the beach from it. The sand is hard enough on the beach that you can bike on it pretty easily, which is also nice. The state park is a pretty big stretch of undeveloped waterfront, which is nice. If you look down the beach either way, it's mostly just condos and hotels as far as you can see.

My dad and I rode our bikes along the beach the other day. We rode south a little bit, and rode around in some private campgrounds and checked out all the RVs. Then, we rode north, towards what I think is the “city” of Myrtle Beach. We managed to get off the beach and onto the road by going through a resort-y thing, past a bunch of cars going to park at a craft show that was going on in the resort. We rode along the road for a while, past a bunch of hotels and condos and whatnot, that seems to be mostly what makes up Myrtle Beach.

We mostly just hung out around the park while we were there, my dad went out on his bike to get a phone off craigslist, and the girls went out for a ride too.

The next day, I biked into Myrtle Beach (by myself this time) along the same route that we took yesterday. Just across the road from the resort that we got off the beach at, there's another resort-y thing, which I biked into. There was a locked gate that you needed a code to get through if you were in a car, but there was a sidewalk that went right past it, so I hopped on that. That's the cool part about having a bike, you can go anywhere. I biked around there for a bit, nobody gave me a second look, which was cool.

A little further up the road, there was a conference center with this really cool ramp! The building was raised up on stilts, with a parking garage underneath, you could drive you car up around this half-spiral ramp to the raised front of the building, like if you wanted to drop someone off, then go down another half-spiral ramp on the other side back to ground level! It was REALLY fun to do it on a bike, you could just go around, and around… You did have to watch for cars coming out of the parking garage though, I almost had an incident with that.

After biking around (and around, and around…) the conference center ramps, I went up the road a bit more, and biked around some parking garages for the hotels and condos! I've never done it before, and it was actually really fun! I just followed all the arrows on the floor, and eventually managed to find my way to the top of one of them! I did get some weird looks from people who I guess were staying at the hotel/condo that owned the parking garage, but that was fine, nobody bothered me.

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be much to see in Myrtle Beach – I don't think I got very far into the city, but just looking down the road, it's just condos, and hotels as far as you can see. There were some people staying at the hotels, but not too many. I bet it's crazy in the summer though! The state park was very nice, the South Carolina State Parks are really great!