Day 10 -- Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Saturday 7/7/2001
Excursion: Myrtle Waves
We got up early this morning to get a glimpse at the damage, if any. For us, the only issue was that lots of things had been buried in sand from the water having risen around the trailer. We had also dropped a number of things on the grass and around the campsite when we left in a hurry. But it only took about one hour to rinse things off. After that you could barely tell that anything had happened around us. I took a bicycle tour around the campground to see if there was any damage elsewhere. There were several trailers, on the northern beach side of the campground, that had gotten their awnings ripped off. Ripped off as in completely torn off, leaving only a frizzled inch or two of fabric hanging by the trailer. Vincent's tent had survived, which is quite amazing given that it was near where awnings got ripped off.
Interestingly enough you could feel that we must have been at the border of two weather systems yesterday afternoon. It was much cooler outside and not so muggy. But it was not cold, just more comfortable. We ate breakfast at our trailer and got ready for today's excursion: the Myrtle Waves water park. We packed a picnic for lunch. We drove through the old Air Force base on our way and stopped to take a few pictures. You could see a 100ft (30m) wide path where it had touched down. Trees had been snapped and branches torn everywhere. And these were big trees, not some small brushes.
Paule and Vincent inspecting tree damage on the Air Force base
In the picture above you can see how big trees have been torn off 15-50ft (5m-15m) off the ground. The forces that make that happen must have been incredible.
A snapped tree trunk
We continued to the water park. Saturdays are a good day to go as it is the change over day for a lot of tourists and campers. The weather was very nice. The kids had a great time.
Isabella in the big wave pool
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A few pictures from Myrtle Waves
One thing I noticed this year was that quite a few of the local guys wore underwear under their swim-gear. This must be an extension of the bag-ass dress code, allowing even swim suits to show the virtual butt crack (covered by their underwear, of course). When we got home we prepared a fish and rice dinner. It was very nice. The weather was noticeably cooler compared to yesterday. We decided to shut off the air conditioning, which did not run much anyway.