Fuenteovejuna did it

Recently I had the opportunity to return to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for the first time in 35 years. When I was a child in the 1960's, my parents took the family there all the time. It was absolute magic to me. If you like a big bustling beach experience, it is still the place to go. It's so big that it's nickname is "The Grand Strand."

Even in the 60's, I remember that there were so many people at this beach that traffic was tremendous and the infrastructure stayed overloaded all summer. Making a simple telephone call involved waiting minutes for a dial tone as the phone system constantly reeled from the sheer numbers of people. That persists to this day in that cell phone data hardly works at Myrtle Beach. I could barely get 500kb of wireless data to come or go while I was recently there. There are just so many people. If you want to be alone, it's not the place to go. Don't count on doing much mobile web browsing. Get on down to the beach.

One of my fondest memories of this beach is a huge old gift shop called The Gay Dolphin Gift Cove. After 35 years, I was surprised to see that it is still there, still booming, and still run by the same family. It has been there since 1946. It was destroyed once in 1954 by Hurricane Hazel and has survived many others since then.

With multiple floors packed to the gills with crazy stuff, it was the most magic place for a kid at the most magic of places, Myrtle Beach.

Image #1: Walking down Ocean Boulevard, the same sign that greeted me as a child in the 1960's is still there.



Image #2: It's a gaudy, kooky-looking store full of crazy merchandise. When I was little, one could climb on top of the glass tower by means of a narrow spiral staircase. Maybe too many drunken frat boys fell off, as the upper reach of it is closed now.



Image #3: This is the beachfront side of the store, plain and retro looking. On the top, one can see a little of a house sitting up there. I imagine some of the founding family still lives there. In the right side of the image, you can see the Myrtle Beach SkyWheel, which is the tallest Ferris wheel east of the Mississippi. The next picture was taken from the SkyWheel.



Image #4: The Gay Dolphin as seen from giant Ferris wheel. It's the big white building in the center. Only at the top of the SkyWheel did I get a 4G cell signal that worked, lol.



Image #5: a metal dolphin fountain inside of the store that is at the base of the glass tower. I love 'em.

Some pics from today's drive as I head south for another week at work.

Image #1: Passing the giant peach (water tower) in Gaffney, South Carolina. It's also known as The Peachoid. Some say it looks like a bum or derriere (see pics in the link).



Image #2: My "business king" room at the Red Roof. For those outside the country, Red Roof is an economy hotel chain, though not rock bottom. For a few dollars more, usually $5 more, you too can be a king at the "Roof" and get a cute room like this one for relaxing net surfing. It's really nice in here, really! It's probably best not to shine a black light on the bed spread, though.

This hit me as clever and funny. I cut across several lanes of traffic to get this shot.

As I crisscross the Carolinas this week for work, one of my stops was Hardeeville, South Carolina. They have good food and Internet there. Hardeeville has a local net provider and my hotel was connected to it. The upload/download speeds were mind blowing. My cable net connection at home is from a national carrier, and while the download is great, the upload sucks.

I ate both the soul food and the Mexican seen advertised in the following pictures. The soul food wins in this town.

I like the mix of English/Spanish in the images.

A street sign I spotted near Greenville, South Carolina.

This road to recovery was very short, about 200 feet, so you would be able to recover very quickly.