Pushin' Forty.

We went to Myrtle Beach this weekend for Ted's birthday and had a blast despite the crazy weather. I don't know what it is with us and the beach, but we are destined to be rained upon whenever we go. It's been boiling here for the past 2 months and we've been in a drought. As soon as Ted and I get within view of the ocean, however, a tropical windstorm rolls through.

We got to the beach around 10pm on Friday night and after a slight debacle with our hotel involving not being able to find the check-in area, getting a room with no towels, no working phones, and beds that felt like sheets of plywood, we settled in with some much needed cable and a not-so-plywood-resembling bed. Deadliest Catch was on, so all of our previous frustrations about our arrival melted away as we watched the Time Bandit and friends navigate through Dutch Harbor.


View from our delightful replacement room




Saturday brought more hot and humid weather, for awhile anyway. We went down to the "strip" to replace my boogie board (a casualty in the beach camping disaster of 2007) and check out the junk in the stores. We then grabbed some breakfast at a pancake house just in time to see the rain, thunder, and lightning roll in. I was bummed, as I had been planning on "beaching it" the majority of the day. We watched the lightning hit the ocean from a parking lot and soon the weather began to break and the sun came out. We spent some time on the beach waiting for the all clear to go swimming, and then ran back to the hotel to get our gear.



It may not look it, but it was perfect beach weather. The sun wasn't beating down on you, but it was plenty warm, and the ocean was the perfect temperature.


T-Bone enjoys the surf

We ended up having great weather on the beach for a few hours, and had just started packing up when it began to rain again. This time there was some minor flooding as the rain cascaded down. It was so bad out that we decided to forego a nice dinner out and possible drenched bar hopping for some pizza and beer in the hotel room. We were both exhausted from the overdose of sun and salt and welcomed a night of just lounging around the hotel room and watching TV.


Ready for our wild night on the town

Sunday brought the sun again and we made a bee line for South of the Border so Ted could get his fireworks fix.


The happiest place on earth?

Ted's Graceland

The purchases

We also had some fun in the hat store.






True story: As we are getting ready to head to the car, a couple is standing near us looking baffled. They were your stereotypical yuppie-type couple. I think they were driving a Mini Cooper and had sweaters tied around their necks. Anyway, the guy looks at us all serious and says "This place is really cheesy, huh?" as if they had pulled off the interstate expecting to see Starbucks and a JCrew outlet. Instead they found "Fort Pedro Fireworks" and "Pedro's T-Shirt Shop," and it wreaked of urine and cheap hot dogs. Ted and I exclaimed "Yeah!" and sort of looked at them like "Were you expecting anything else?" They just looked really confused and got in their car and left.


It was a good trip.