Going to the Beach in South Carolina

My bride and I are at the Wyndham at Myrtle Beach for a few days. The drive here was uneventful, which is the best kind of drive. I believe the only note-worthy thing about it was lunch at a Burger King in London, Kentucky, about an hour's drive south of home. What was notable was that the hamburger joint was also the Grayhound bus station--that added immeasurably to the ambiance, let me tell you. We wrote the name of the place on our list and drew a line through it. That's our expression for identifying a place we will avoid returning to. It comes from a 1950s John Wayne movie, The Quiet Man, in which one of the characters told one of his flunkies to write down an individual's name and "draw a line through it". It's a good movie, and Maureen O'Hara is beautiful. I'm going to have to dig up a copy of it and watch it again. You can learn more about the movie at The Quiet Man.

Specifically, we're at Wyndham Ocean Boulevard in North Myrtle Beach, and we're enjoying the ocean and the tourists greatly. The unit, on the 15th floor of Tower 2, is decent, but ready for a refurbishment. The furniture is worn out and saggy, especially the living room/dining room sofa. This is a three bedroom unit (we got upgraded because we're big shots), and the living/dining room is the same size as that two bedroom units, it just has more furniture in it. The weather the first couple of days we were here was bright and sunny........

View from our balcony

But today is cold and rainy. But this is February, you know.

We took an "owner update" on Monday, and almost had to fight our way out of the sales room: I had to get military and colonel-like to convince them we weren't going to buy anything, especially the $180K share of the New York City Wyndham they tried to sell us. I think Wyndham does itself more harm than good with relatively high pressure sales tactics, but that's just my opinion. I haven't seen the sales figures. We got out of there with our $100 American Express card incentive, and they threw in a $25 card to a local restaurant.......that'll be lunch today. But next time, I'm not going in the barrel for less that $125. Anything less isn't worth the hassle, I think.

Thinking of Wyndham, yesterday we were able to use a Wyndham "Club Pass" to arrange for a stay at the World Mark resort at the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park in the fall. World Mark is Wyndham's ne plus ultra chain of resorts, so it cost us an extra $125, but it seems that was the only way we were going to get to stay at that resort, which is something Kate wanted to do. We stayed just north of the park in the little town of Gardiner just last summer, but we wanted another look at the place. There is certainly lots to see.

We have another trip out west lined up for later in the year: In July, we're going to go to Santa Fe again. I guess the visit just before Christmas didn't scratch the itch. During one of those trips, probably the one to Yellowstone, I want to drive through the chain of national parks and monuments south of there, running mostly north and south through Arizona and Utah. That's pretty ambitious, but it won't be as complicated and expensive as the prospective trip through Europe to Istanbul that we cancelled because of the expense, difficulty and crazed Muslims running around Europe. 

I guess that brings you up to date. Stay tuned for our next exciting adventure.