Family Fun in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

 

Family Fun in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for June 18, 2023

The Swank Family spent the past week in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  It was our first visit to the area, but I'm pretty sure it won't be our last.

We rented a condo on the beach and had fun swimming and walking around to discover interesting places.  We went on the pier and found people fishing.  They were pulling in baby black tip sharks left and right.  One guy gave one to Luke and I to take some pictures with before releasing back to the water.  It was a little freaky to see so many sharks coming out only a few hundred yards away from the area we'd been swimming in earlier in the day.

We went to Broadway on the Beach which has a bunch of cool shops and amusements.  We saw the Simpsons 4d Experience which was exciting for us as we're all longtime Simpsons fans.  Seeing them coming out of the screen was thrilling!

Huntington Beach State Park was a fun place to do a little hiking and critter spotting.  

  

We always love finding alligators out in the wild.  There's just something exciting about stalking critters that could cause some serious damage if they got hold of you.  Most of the ones we saw were pretty small, but we were told there's some big ones out there.

We always enjoy spotting new species of birds we don't get to see regularly in Minnesota.  I have no idea what this was, but I liked his pointy beak.

We saw several of these wannabe flamingos.  We don't get a lot of pink birds to follow back home.

Miss Sheri does the majority of the driving for our family.  I rented a standard sized automobile for the week, but due to an unexpected flight delay we arrived about 6 hours late to pick it up.  We were told the only thing they had left was this monster truck.  It would have been a lot of fun if we weren't staying in a condo with a 10 story parking garage with very narrow pathways.  It was a whole bunch of drama having to navigate this bad boy in and out of the building every day.

On Tuesday night, we explored Murrel's Inlet on the Pie Eyed Parrot Sunset Cruise.  It's also known as a Booze Cruise and we did our best to live up to the namesake.  

We had a lot of fun on the 3 hour excursion and were rewarded with a beautiful sunset to end the evening.  

On Wednesday, we went on the Waccamaw River & Nature Tour.

We saw an Osprey in Prior Lake early this Spring, but here we had the opportunity to see a whole bunch more including some nesting with babies.  They're beautiful birds of prey.

We didn't realize this guy had a large fish in his talons until later looking at the pictures.  I kind of felt bad we were disturbing his lunch!

We also got to see some other alligators in the river or resting on it's banks.  This guy let us pull up the boat almost right next to him and didn't move an inch while we took photos.  Miss Sheri told me she thought it was a fake they put there to fool the tourists.

We visited the Ripley's Aquarium at Broadway on the Beach.  They have a fun shark exhibit that we walked through a couple of times.

They also had penguins which we also see at the Minnesota Zoo, but they're just so darned cute I figure I had to include them.

We went on Express Watersports Dolphin Cruise and rode out a couple miles to watch pods of dolphins swimming around.

I honestly didn't notice the photo bomber when I took this of Miss Sheri and the boys, but after I saw what a really nice shot it was I kept it.

Since we can never see too many alligators on our trip, we made a stop at the Alligator Adventures Park where they had hundreds of them.  They get kind of feisty when they're all piled together like this.

Miss Sheri hates it when I say stuff like this, but I'm pretty sure I could take one of these guys if I really had to.  I do know a little karate after all.

Watching them get fed is our favorite.  Even the really big guys will leap out of the water to get some of that sweet, sweet chicken. 

Myrtle Beach is known as the Mini Golf Capital of the World, so we had to give one of the courses a crack.  I even suck at this type of golf unfortunately.  I'm much better at the video game version.

It's Father's Day today and I feel like I had an awesome Father's Week with my boys.  I'm so glad they're still willing to join us on adventures like these because we really do have a lot of fun together.  I'm very proud of these boys and the young men they're becoming.  

I hope all you great dads out there had an outstanding Father's Day!