Myrtle Beach
We've been away the past few days in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, attending a funeral on Friday. Chelsea, her mother, and I made the drive; the kids stayed in town and made the rounds among several family members and friends. We are very grateful to all of the kids' hosts for their help.
Two strange things about this trip. One, we ended up staying at a beachfront hotel in Myrtle Beach thanks to Chelsea's cousin Melissa, who works at a hotel in the same corporate family. We're not at the beach very often in the winter, and it was both beautiful and fairly desolate. Here's the sunrise on our last morning in town:
The second thing was that we ended up staying an extra day in Myrtle Beach because there was an epic snow and ice storm in the Carolinas and Virginia on Saturday, when we would have been driving home. It fell as rain in Myrtle Beach, but southern Virginia got 15" (38cm) of snow, and there was heavy ice in North Carolina.
On our way home yesterday, the roads were pretty clear up to about as far north as Raleigh. There we started to encounter some untreated roads and some icy patches. Secondary roads were much worse than the highway, and I-95 turned out to be in pretty decent shape. We figure that with the remnants of Saturday's storm, the drive home took us about 90 minutes longer than it would have otherwise.
Chelsea's mother, Mary, did some of the driving in both directions, which afforded me the rare opportunity to sit in the back seat and watch a movie:
The movie I'm watching in that photo, by the way, is Rocket Science.
Two strange things about this trip. One, we ended up staying at a beachfront hotel in Myrtle Beach thanks to Chelsea's cousin Melissa, who works at a hotel in the same corporate family. We're not at the beach very often in the winter, and it was both beautiful and fairly desolate. Here's the sunrise on our last morning in town:
The second thing was that we ended up staying an extra day in Myrtle Beach because there was an epic snow and ice storm in the Carolinas and Virginia on Saturday, when we would have been driving home. It fell as rain in Myrtle Beach, but southern Virginia got 15" (38cm) of snow, and there was heavy ice in North Carolina.
On our way home yesterday, the roads were pretty clear up to about as far north as Raleigh. There we started to encounter some untreated roads and some icy patches. Secondary roads were much worse than the highway, and I-95 turned out to be in pretty decent shape. We figure that with the remnants of Saturday's storm, the drive home took us about 90 minutes longer than it would have otherwise.
Chelsea's mother, Mary, did some of the driving in both directions, which afforded me the rare opportunity to sit in the back seat and watch a movie:
The movie I'm watching in that photo, by the way, is Rocket Science.
