Myrtle Beach, SC
Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Alison and I reconfigured our travel plans for the year. We postponed many of the trips we originally planned and pivoted to add new trips. Instead of our original plans, we brainstormed travel locations where we feel we can stay relatively safe. We focused on places where we would spend most of our time outdoors, figuring these locations would be more conducive to social distancing. One place that has been our list, but that we have never visited is South Carolina. We researched places we could visit within South Carolina and settled on visiting Myrtle Beach. Right around the time we booked the trip, Covid-19 cases began to surge in the South. There were headlines declaring, if South Carolina was a country it would have one of the worst Coronavirus rates in the world. As we read these headlines we seriously considered cancelling the trip. Instead of canceling, we exercised patience. We decided to wait and see if the situation improved before making any decisions.
On July 2, 2020 the Myrtle Beach City Council implemented a face mask mandate requiring face masks be worn in public places. on July 3, 2020 the Horry County Council (county where Myrtle Beach is located) voted to require face masks in businesses and retail establishments throughout the county. We were interested to see the impact these measures had on cases in Horry County. Data on the cases in Horry County on any given day was available, but it was difficult to find the data in a format that made it easy to analyze over a period of time. Since we planned to spend most of this trip within Horry County (we are planning to potentially visit Brunswick country, North Carolina, but they are in good shape with 6.1 cases per 100,000 people) we wanted to understand the trends within Horry County. Alison began tracking the data within a spreadsheet and graphing the 7-day average of cases. The data clearly shows that after the mask mandate the number of cases significantly decreased. Horry County has a downward trend in cases since the July 4 weekend. This coincides with actions that the community is taking to help slow the spread, which includes the use of face masks and practicing social distancing. This trend gave us confidence that we could visit Horry County and stay reasonably safe. In fact, as of Tuesday August 18, 2020, Horry County's rate of 10.9 cases per 100,000 people is better than Salt Lake County's rate of 14.1 cases per 100,000 people (Data obtained from globalepidemics.org).
After weighing the risks, we decided to vacation in Myrtle Beach. We plan on adjusting our behavior to minimize our risk. Our hotel room has a full kitchen and we plan to cook breakfast at our hotel. We will also prepare lunch at our hotel. We did some research and found a grocery story where we can do grocery pickup (we are being even more cautious than we would be at home). We also decided we are going to avoid indoor restaurants. We will try to eat at restaurants with outdoor seating, or get take out. The information we have seen shows the virus is much more likely to spread in indoor environments. This is why even at home we avoid eating indoors, going to movies, etc, right now. As these activities present a higher risk of potential infection. We planned this trip to enable us to have a fun time relaxing by the beach and visiting a new place, while also balancing health concerns.
We left on Wednesday morning. We took the 6am flight to Atlanta. The 6am flight is brutal, but it was our best option. It also meant we would have an extra half day in South Carolina. The flight to Atlanta was uneventful. We had a really quick layover in Atlanta - by the time we walked over to the gate our next flight it was boarding. The flight between Atlanta and Myrtle Beach was short - only about 50 minutes. Both flights were about half empty. Between the spacing, air filtration, extra cleaning procedures and the mask requirements on the flights we felt safe. Delta does a great job of emphasizing health and safety.
We arrived in Myrtle Beach a little before 2pm. We picked up our rental car. On this trip we rented a van. It had plenty of space for our group/luggage, but was really lacking in the technology department - no Apple car play, or even a bluetooth connection. Fortunately we were able to rig up an aux cable to connect our phone to play music. While we were picking up the rental car we placed a to-go lunch order at Wahlburgers. We stopped to pick up lunch on the way to our hotel. While Kristin and Dan ran in to pick up the food their girls had a dance party in the van.
Walhburgers was the first thing we ate today other than the bagged plane snacks and it tasted great. We ate the food back to our hotel. We are staying at Ocean 22. It is a Hilton Grand Vacations property. Blake and Debbie own a timeshare through Hilton Grand Vacations and put their kids on title so we were able to get a great deal on this hotel. It is located right on the beach. We have a two room suite with an ocean view. It is a great hotel - good location, spacious room, full kitchen, incredible balcony, and appealing aesthetics.
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| Holly is enamored with our balcony. She loves looking out toward the ocean. |
After we ate lunch, we headed to the beach. The hotel has beach access. We took the elevator down to the first floor, picked up some towels and walked out onto the beach. The weather was perfect for spending time on the beach. It was a sunny day and the water was warm. We set up a beach blanket and spent the next couple of hours playing in the ocean and on the beach. Skylee loved playing in the ocean and especially loved coming out deep into the ocean with Dan, Alison, and I. Holly was in heaven playing in both the sand and the water.
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| The white and blue hotel in the middle is our hotel - Ocean 22 |
When we were done playing on the beach Alison and I went and picked up our grocery order. Ordering our groceries ahead of time worked well. We ordered them yesterday and today we drove up and they loaded them right into our trunk. We got back to the hotel and ordered food from Big Mike's Soul Food. We got a variety of fried chicken and BBQ chicken with classic southern sides such as mac and cheese, hush puppies (Alison's favorite), cornbread, fried okra, and more. While we were waiting for the order to be prepared I flew my drone off of our hotel room balcony. It worked pretty well, but I had a hard time getting it to land on our balcony, until I turned off the object avoidance sensors. Watching me fly it back onto the balcony to land was stressing Alison out.
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| Skylee used the beach toys to turn the couch into her personal pirate ship |
Alison and I picked up dinner and we ate it back at our hotel room. After we ate we sat on the balcony for a while. It started to get late and the sun was setting so we headed back down to the beach. We walked down the beach for about an hour. While we were walking along the beach we noticed a lot of people with flashlights looking around the beach. I asked one of them what they were doing. They told us they were searching for shark teeth. We did some research and that is one thing people do in Myrtle Beach. We may have to look into it. Our walk down the beach was the perfect way to end our first day at Myrtle Beach.
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