For my work we are considered a medical service so we barely get any days off. We got 1 day off for Christmas, and no days off for Easter. We have to take off time on our own in order to get it. I was really in need of time off. When I asked Rebecca when she had off in April, Easter weekend was the only weekend, so I started planning even though it was a little over 21 days in advance. I'm the queen of last minute planning, and just planning vacations in general at this point. I had a hard time deciding where to go at first so I did an Instagram poll to help me decide on a general destination. My choices included Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, or California. The Carolina's ended up getting most of the votes so I began searching for places in both, ultimately deciding on Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach has a lot of resorts, so there were a lot of options for affordable AirBNBs in the area. Before doing the poll I had briefly looked into visiting Florida, but all the AirBNBs I came cost $120+ per night which wasn't too bad, but at that point I'd rather just stay in a hotel.
Rebecca drove to my apartment at 3am, and then we set off to O'Hare for a 5:20am flight. (Although you get to have most of your day at your destination, I don't know if I made the right choice having a flight so early.) I bought the cheapest non-sketchy parking I could find for O'Hare which ended up being $20 for the the 5 days at a nearby hotel. Unfortunately at 4:30am they don't have shuttles running to O'Hare from the hotel so we had to take an Uber. It was 30 degree windchill when we left Wisconsin. We bought tickets separately because I was staying a day extra so Rebecca and I were on the same flight but not seats.
It was a 1.5 hour flight with an hour layover in Charlotte. During the layover we ate breakfast before getting ready to board the flight. My church is currently planting a church in Matthews, NC so if our layover had been longer we could have checked it out, or we could have checked it out and then driven the rest of the way to Myrtle Beach. We had decided to fly into Florence instead of the Myrtle Beach airport because I assumed the flights would be cheaper. I don't know if it actually was. Both Myrtle Beach and Florence have really small airports. I had booked our car rental at the Enterprise across town instead of the one at the airport due to higher ratings, and was glad I did so, because the people were great, mostly. However it was around 75 when we got to Florence around 11am, which meant insects were out. Specifically a wasp that was red colored that wanted to ride in the rental car. Rebecca and I sat in the car while the worker took notes on the car and explained the policies to us. I had the front door open at the time and the wasp landed on the inside of the door. The worker was unsure what to do and began kicking the door to scare the wasp off. The only thing I was thinking was how she was just pissing off the wasp more and how it was going to fly at me at any second and sting me. I turned off the car and got ready to run when the wasp thankfully flew away. The worker then decided it would be best to shut the front door and finished off explaining the policies from the back of the car, so we would all be safe from the wasp which ended up coming back and flying around the closed off car. We ended up with a White Hyundai Accent which was pretty nice.
When we drove into Myrtle Beach we started searching for different beaches to go to. It was the perfect day to be at the beach and we couldn't check into our Air BNB until 4pm. While driving in Myrtle Beach I noticed how narrow the roads are. Most of the major roads were narrow one lanes which threw me off for the first day of driving before I got used to it. We settled on a beach in North Myrtle Beach which is a different city from Myrtle Beach but it was hard to find parking that wasn't reserved. We ended up paying $20 to park for 3 hours. (In hindsight we could have probably found a place to park for a lot less). A lot of places offered free parking, or very cheap parking in the area, which I was very glad for. Touristy areas tend to charge way too much. One of the biggest touristy places in Myrtle Beach which I'll get into later, Broadway on the Beach offered free parking and it felt like it would definitely be a place where you would usually pay a lot.
I got my beach towel and other beachy things out of my suitcase and had to change in a port of potty which was pretty disgusting. I couldn't get over the softness of the sand on the beach, all the shells, and the warmer feeling of the water. (Lake Michigan is numbing even in the warmest months.) It was so fun jumping over the waves and swimming in the water. Even getting splashed in the face with saltwater. Sitting in the sun, and being in the water felt so healing after such a long winter in Wisconsin. It felt very surreal. My hair ended up really liking the seawater and formed beachy ringlet curls. I put on sunscreen, but most of it must have washed off in the water because I ended up getting a sunburn which was pretty painful/uncomfortable for the first night. Rebecca decided on not wearing sunscreen so hers lasted longer, whereas mine only hurt the one night. After 2.5 hours we headed to our AirBNB.
We struggled a little bit getting into our AirBNB due to the door being stuck. We put in the code and the sound of the door unlocked what it wouldn't open, but we eventually figured it out. The room was apart of a lower quality resort called the Wave Rider with outdoor access to each room. Our room had the layout of a hotel room with two beds and a TV. It also came with a dresser, and a table with two chairs. There was a balcony with chairs outside overlooking an outdoor pool and hot tub. It also came with a small kitchenette which included a full size stove, refrigerator, and kitchen sink. It also came with mugs, drinking glasses, pots/pans, and utensils. We also had our own bathroom.
After settling in we went to get stuff for the week from Wal-Mart. By this point after having a strong coffee from Dunkin and barely any food/lack of sleep I felt very weirdly out of it which wasn't a nice feeling. I somehow managed to remember everything that we needed, and guided us through the store. We got stuff for our sunburns, sandwich stuff, snacks, treats, drinks, etc. We bought a pizza for supper which we cooked in the stove at the AirBNB. We watched Ratouille to end the night. The AirBNB also came with access to Netflix, Disney +, HBO Max and YouTube which was a bonus that hadn't been in the listing. The AirBNB was also across the street from the ocean so it took about 5 minutes to walk to the water which was really nice. We had free parking at the AirBNB so we had access to the ocean whenever we wanted. Rebecca worked on a paper for school until 2am.
It sounds like an amazing first day!
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