South Carolina: The Sandcastles of Myrtle Beach

There were a couple summers during my elementary years where my family would load up our minivan and head down south to meet my aunt, uncle, and their three children for a big trip to sunny South Carolina. Our destination was Myrtle Beach, located on the northern border of the State, and we were going to be staying in a penthouse. We would always leave very early in the morning, just before the sun was up for these trips, and since we were driving in separate vehicles, my dad and my uncle sprung for a pair of two-way radios so we could communicate with one another on the way down. This was still the time before GPS and MapQuest, and cell phones were just beginning to become common to have, so we were using Triple-A’s TripTickets. I remember the road map having a big streak of yellow highlighter tracing the routes from Indy all the way to the Atlantic coast.

While I had certainly gone on road trips before, the trips out to South Carolina stick out especially in my mind for the grueling length of the drives. Accounting for breaks – and there were many thanks to the six of us kids – the drive would take around sixteen hours one way. However, I still have many fond memories of the time in the car. When we had gone to New York, I knew we went through the Appalachian mountains, but I have much more vivid memories of them from the South Carolina trips. The verdant hills of eastern Ohio grew higher and higher into ancient rounded peaks, twisting and winding through ridges that had been cleared decades before by dynamite. I remember the valleys of trees that would make my stomach twist as I looked down into them and thinking “what would happen if our car went down there?” I’d never ponder that answer for very long. I remember watching the sun come up while driving through the passes, the black sky turning gray, and being treated to soupy mist that became a torrential rainstorm. In retrospect, that would have scared me, but I was too young to understand the implications of driving in the rain on curvy roads. Mom and Dad would keep us safe.

And then there were the radios. My dad and uncle Charlie would use them to stay in touch and help each other navigate our way down, but during particularly long stretches of interstate, my sisters and I would radio my cousins in their truck. I remember Stacy the most as she would hail us using the callsign “Trailer Trash” and we would all laugh and laugh. I think my mom came up with a nickname for us, but I can’t remember it. And, like many two way radios, they worked on a couple generic bands, and we’d often pick up chatter from truckers or road crews and we would try to prank them. Once, we happened upon another group who was using radios for a similar purpose and had a polite conversation with them. They were such a novel idea, those radios, and it was one of the coolest things ever to me at the time. Nowadays, you’d just make a call or send a text message to stay in touch, and it makes me a little sad that generations that are growing up after me will never know the novelties of using a map and radios to road trip.

Anyway, other things I remember from the trip were driving through West Virginia and experiencing toll roads for the first time. The idea that you would have to pay to drive on a road was pretty stupid to me, because roads were for everyone to get from here to there. And they didn’t have highways in West Virginia: they had “turnpikes,” whatever those were. West Virginia was a weird place then, but I definitely owe it a proper visit. I remember the mountains dwindling down to foothills, and the land becoming flat as we made our way towards central North Carolina. We stayed the night there for a rest in a dinky little Motel 6 (note: I don’t count it on my list officially because it was just a “layover” stay), and it was only in the upper 50s when we left the next morning, and we hoped it wasn’t an indicator of the weather to come.

As we neared our destination, dad rolled down the windows so we could smell the salty sea air. Thousands of other travelers had the same idea as us, and the traffic was awful. It took us two hours to get from the outer limits of Myrtle Beach to our hotel, but we finally made it. While my dad and his sister checked in, we helped mom haul our suitcases up the stairs to the very top of the hotel, where we would be staying in the aforementioned penthouse. It was octagon shaped, with about six other units sharing the upper floor and soft blue astroturf covering all the walking areas. The hotel was U-shaped, with a huge pool in the center, and a long wooden staircase that lead directly into the ocean.

We hurriedly moved into our temporary home, with my little sister and I sharing a bed in my parents’ room, all of the teenage kids opting to sleep on the couches and on rafts in the “living room” of the penthouse. We threw on swimsuits and slathered ourselves in SPF50 and then dashed down the wooden stairs to the beach. The ocean was nothing new to me, but I still remember the sparkling blue water, the cry of gulls, and the fresh persistent breeze as it rolled off the water. But the thing I remember most? The shells.

Due to erosion of the beach, the Coast Guard had worked up a brilliant plan to vacuum sand from offshore back onto the beach to help fortify the coastline. They did a magnificent job, but at a cost. The beach became a veritable graveyard of shells, and if you forgot your sandals…well you just couldn’t afford to forget your sandals. My sister and I would like to stay in the fluffy white sand before the beach turned into shells, and I would toss a vortex football with my cousins down there.

There were tons of people in Myrtle Beach. I remember some guys a little older than my big sister riding on these pedal cars that you would lay in and steer with the back wheels. There were constant life guard patrols on the beach with their little dune buggies. It was rare for you to not see at least one volleyball game going on, and there were hundreds of body boarders out in the surf. Little single engine planes would race back and forth over the horizon trailing those clear banners with the red letters, hawking wares from the various surf shops that lined the streets of the main boulevard.

The shops were new and novel to me – you know the ones, with the swimsuits, sunscreen, goggles, witty t-shirts – and I would enjoy helping my dad pick out buckets to use for building sandcastles, or the coolest kite to get and fly on the beach. Each year we were there, there was always one item the stores would have trouble keeping in stock. The first time, it was hermit crabs, which we bought on the last day there because we had no luck finding a wild crab all week. The second time, it was laser pointers, that we all got and would have laser light shows when the parents weren’t paying attention.

We did so many things while in Myrtle Beach. Every day we would go to the beach and hang out on towels and jam to the local country station. By afternoon, we were probably splashing around in the pool, and sunset was usually met with a long walk on the beach. A couple times, we walked what seemed like two miles out to a pier, and had seafood dinners, and then would walk out to the very end of the wooden structure to watch the fishermen out there. As we watched, one of them caught a tiny shark, which must have been only a foot long. He tossed it back casually and told us how earlier in the day, he’d spotted a ten-foot tiger shark prowling around in the water. This did nothing to change my mind about the ocean, and I stuck to the surf. After dark, my dad and uncle would break out their guitars and sit on the balcony on cheap fold out lawn chairs and make up silly songs.

There were other adventures to be had as well. Dad had grown up being fascinated by kite flying, and took one of the kites we bought and unspooled the string as far as it would go. Then, he’d get out another spool and tie it on and string it out as well. Eventually, he had the kite on the end of eleven spools of string, a staggering thousand feet, prompting passersby to stop and squint way into the distance for the speck that was his kite. The wind finally broke the string, and the kite disappeared into clouds.

And then, there were the eponymous sand castles. As indicated by the previous paragraph, dad wasn’t one to skimp on anything he did. These weren’t just a couple buckets of sand stacked on one another; these were four-foot tall palaces. He and my uncle would get up around 6 in the morning, and begin digging a hole in the sand, just at the edge of the tide line. They used real lawn shovels for the job, not those cheap plastic shovels you’d get with a bucket and pile it all into an enormous mound that they would terrace. My cousin Terry was in charge of water, and hauled gallon buckets from the ocean to dump on the mound so it would hold its shape. The rest of us helped build the crenelated towers and walls using our plastic molds.

One of our mighty sand castles

I actually found a picture we took of the smallest sand castle we ever built. When we came down from our room the next day, we found this one stomped down by some heartless person, so we set out building another, bigger castle. This one we booby trapped with moats of the dagger-like shells, and the castle stood until the next day, but was dried out and was easily destroyed by the wind. We have a big picture of it somewhere, and if I can find it, I’ll try to scan it and update the post.

I have other memories of the worst sunburn of my life, and having to stay inside while everyone else was out at the beach having fun. Mom and I sat inside and chatted with the maid, who had the friendliest smile and wore a white bandana. We made peanut butter sandwiches and offered her one, but she politely declined before turning on her vacuum. Another night, my little sister was sleep walking and tried to leave out the front door of our room. It spooked my cousin, and she decided to sleep on the floor in front of the door, in case my sister decided to make another somnabulatory escape. It was scary then, but we all laugh about it now.

I remember a trip to the Pirate Lagoon Mini Golf course, that was probably the coolest I’ve ever seen. You started by riding some mine carts to the top of a volcano, where you would be sent to the Silver Run or the Gold Run and challenge Black Beard’s Par on each hole. I remember putting under a waterfall, and ramping over a stream to get to the pin, and putting to avoid a sneaky pirate skeleton from kicking your ball into a corner. It was definitely better than the Pro-style Greens minigolf course my dad and uncle liked.

It’s clear that I have so many fond memories of my trips to Myrtle Beach, and I’m sure there were millions of other things we did. It was definitely a great time, and maybe I should go back to see if the experience has aged well. Perhaps one day I will!

My next planned installment in this 50 States series will probably take us back to Florida, but I’m pondering skipping that story for now since I already talked about that State, and go on to talk about my first trip to Hawai’i. I suppose if there’s reader demand one way or the other, I’ll write what you would like to read!

Tags: myrtle beach, sandcastles, south carolina, states, travel

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