One Rineer Bearcat, one Rineer Redhawk and one Rineer Chanticleer?

Alyssa, her friend Avery and I recently got back from a college visit to Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina near Myrtle Beach.

So much to say about it and our fast, fun trip! I will share some road trip highlights because I will forget details if I don’t write them out...

Alyssa and her friend Avery went on a college visit to College of Charleston last summer with Avery’s dad. Both girls loved that campus tour and had dreams of going to the College of Charleston. They both applied to and received scholarships but the scholarships (Alyssa’s anyway- I’m not sure what Avery received) did not bring the cost down to the price of an in state college tuition (that which we are committed to pay for our kids' college). The girls both also applied to Coastal Carolina. Alyssa’s scholarship amount (again, I’m not sure about Avery’s) was enough to cover the delta between out of state tuition and in state and then some. It will be cheaper for us for Alyssa to attend Coastal Carolina than two of the in state colleges that Alyssa applied to even with the scholarship that she was offered at one of the schools. Now, factor in travel costs and attending CC will end up costing more. But we are willing to absorb those costs to make Alyssa’s dream of being near the ocean come true. Alyssa may not end up at CC. She is undecided. She really likes the school but that distance...

Speaking of the distance, we felt it (literally, temperature wise and figuratively as the drive both ways took almost ELEVEN HOURS each way). The drive was... not fun! I don’t have the requisite patience to be a frequent multi hour per day road tripper. Fortunately, I don’t do it often!! Was willing to do it for this trip. But driving eleven hours two out of three days in a row was no fun!

We left Friday morning, destination Myrtle Beach, to dense fog. Many schools near us had a delay due to the fog though our school didn’t. We heard about and saw, on one interstate soon after our journey started, a terrible accident (not sure if it was due to the fog or not but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was due to the fog). I’m afraid the accident included a fatality because that side of the interstate was closed and multiple emergency personnel were on the scene. It was a sober reminder to me to take my time driving.

Coastal Carolina is in Conway, South Carolina which is west of Myrtle Beach (Conway couldn’t really be east of it, could it 😆.) I had booked a room for us in Myrtle Beach at a hotel on the beach. If you’re going to drive 608 miles to a destination, you might as well drive 622 miles to stay by the ocean. Right? Oh man, I was regretting that decision when we drove through Conway. It was dark, rainy, and there was a traffic slowdown in the area. As I saw the signs for hotels in Conway, I was kicking myself. I should have gotten a hotel room in Conway for the first night that we were there since we had a college visit scheduled for Saturday morning. Staying in MB meant that I was driving further to get to MB and then would have to backtrack Saturday morning to drive back to Conway for the college tour. Of course I did not regret the decision once we finally arrived at our hotel in Myrtle Beach and we opened the sliding doors to the balcony and saw and heard the ocean. 

Nor did I regret it the next morning when we had breakfast on the hotel’s patio where we had a view of the ocean! After breakfast, we headed west to Conway and Coastal Carolina University for a college visit. The visit was good! We learned a lot about the university and then got to see it more up close with a smaller student led tour. After the official tour ended, the girls and I walked around campus on our own. The weather was gorgeous, and the scenery was so pretty. If we could just lob a few hundred miles off of the distance from home...

We grabbed lunch and then enjoyed the great outdoors by the beach. We walked on the beach, we relaxed on chairs near the beach... until it started to get really cloudy and windy and even rained a tad bit (there was rain in the forecast but when most of the day, the sky was a perfect cerulean blue and no clouds in sight, it was hard to contemplate the possibility of that). We went into a couple of beach stores and I got all of us sweatshirts (they were buy one get two free so I was not being that generous, lol). we got cleaned up and walked to a restaurant on the beach for dinner. We couldn’t sit outside due to renovations at the place; it was probably too windy anyway. After dinner, we went back to our hotel and relaxed the rest of the evening. We watched a movie and then hit the hay. 

We were up by 7:00 am the next morning for one last breakfast with a view and were on the road by 8:00 am. The trip was mercifully uneventful and we were so glad to pull into our driveway. 

Here are some pictures and a bit more commentary of the trip:

Eeks! That fog, tho 🥴. This is just a few miles from our house. Visibility was super low.

 

Eleven hours later and ONE bathroom trip later, we were rewarded with this view. That statement is not quite true. We stopped twice for gas (and we ate lunch right after getting gas the first time). But the second time we stopped for gas, the place we stopped at did not have a working bathroom. So the only time we used the restroom was in Tennessee after we ate lunch at CFA. That was some good water drinking management on our part.  (I told the girls that we could stop to use the restroom any time they wanted. (Obviously!!))

The next morning, the ocean dazzled in the sunlight and we couldn’t wait to eat breakfast al fresco.

Turkey sausage and cage free eggs to boot!

At Coastal Carolina- that sky does not portend rain later in the day, does it??

I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the buildings with palm trees

You won’t see pansies in flower pots in Ohio until May

The water features were so pretty!

Me with Chauncy the Chanticleer. Unusual, huh? Chanticleer is derived from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. 

Back to Myrtle Beach...

Sun’s out, stuff’s out- lots of things in the room! But it made sense to pack for multiple weather contingencies. When we arrived back at the hotel, Alyssa changed into her bathing suit to lay out!

We stayed at Springhill Mariott- we liked our room quite a bit. It was spacious with the sleeping area...

snack alcove

Pull out sleeper sofa

Our room was on the 15th floor of 26. Here is a view from our balcony. To the right was a kids’ pool and splash pad area.

We relaxed in the area between the pool and the beach. That is until the weather took a turn for the worse. It turned cloudy and windy so we took a walk on the beach to get some movement in to stave off the chill.

We walked to the Landshark Bar & Grill for dinner. It was pretty good. I got big ol' tasty burger (two patties plus bacon) that I could not finish.

While the weather in MB took a turn for the worse in terms of getting cooler, it still beat out the weather in Ohio. It snowed earlier in the day on Saturday.

Same time in MB but way different temperature. 

South Carolina- 1, Ohio- 0

If you factor in the view, the game, so to speak, is going to end in a run rule!