Myrtle Beach has the most beautiful sunsets!

We mentioned in our last post, in order to be a successful/happy/content full-time RVer, one must be flexible! Bill likes life a bit orderly, no surprise to those who know him, “let’s plan and do it!” I’m more of a spontaneous person, ready to rock and roll to most of life’s punches. Or is it the other way around?  😉, anyway, we are a great team!

We continue to reflect back on what an ideal summer we had in Kentucky! (If you missed the posts, start reading here or just for our recap, read about it here.) A well needed action-packed summer full of lots of miles, parks, hiking, sightseeing, etc. We thought after nearly two months of family time, six weeks in Myrtle Beach would be a relaxing break. And besides, we planned to be back in Fredericksburg for six weeks, from Thanksgiving to the New Year (to include the all important Christmas with family). We’d get in at least a five mile beach walk most days, Bill would complete a number of minor repairs/modifications to our RV, plus finish polishing it! Ah, life is good 😊!

From our “home base” of Fredericksburg, Virginia, Myrtle Beach is about a seven hour drive, or nearly 400 miles, in our RV.  Ideally, like most, we prefer to travel only about 200 miles or four hours of driving. In the past, we’ve been splitting our drive there from Fredericksburg in half, but this time, we ended up driving for just over six hours, nearly 330 miles! We had an early start, the traffic was non-existent and the wind was at our backs. We just kept going until we realized, we could make it to Dillon, SC and then only have a short drive in and a FULL day in Myrtle Beach. The plans of man….😏

We stayed in Bass Lake RV Campground, Dillion, South Caroline, an unadvertised Passport America campground (this means 1/2 price for members or less than $20 for full hook ups).  We were very pleased with the easy access from I-95 (although the actual entrance is a bit tricky) and spacious sites. The welcome was warm and the wifi was great! We didn’t get a chance to explore it as it was dinner time when we arrived. Bill did a quick set up while I made salads and heated up dinner. We were pretty beat, but were so excited we’d be sitting on a warm beach the next day! 😎

This was going to be our fifth stay at Pirateland Campground, so we felt like pros. We didn’t need to make an advance reservation as we never have in the past. We now have a favorite site that didn’t seem to be so popular, easy to get in other words. We’ve always stayed there during the off season. Surely arriving on September 24 was still in the off season, right? Of course, you probably have guessed, it wasn’t. Nope, it was so busy, we not only couldn’t get our regular not so popular site, we’d have to move three times our first week there because the campground was PACKED!!! 😱

But since we were staying until November 9, who cares? We’ll just sit back and relax. We’re glad everyone is so friendly and welcoming. We settled in on Site 811 for one night, then had to move down two sites to 807, and then back to 811 for the remainder of our first week. That didn’t sound too bad, until we realized we could have easily stayed on 811 and let the other person move onto 807 for two nights. After all, they were having to move just like us – they were justa few sites away as well. But we didn’t realize this until they left two days later.

Sunset at Myrtle Beach, looking west from the beach

When we arrived, it had rained for nearly a week, so site 811 did have a lot of water where we would have to park the car. But it was HOT when we arrived-beach weather! It dried up, then we had a bit more rain and saw it puddle up again. We decided we didn’t want to chance it, so we looked for another dryer site. Our problem was staying until November 9, many sites had a few days reservations on them.  Pirateland let’s you pick your site, or they pick it for you – no common sense booking on their end to cause needless moves like ours. So it was an ordeal but we finally found a site and on October 1, we did our full set up! Covered the windows with our screens and the tires. Put our out big mat and then we headed to the beach again. It was really like summer weather. So far, so good, finally managed to get in our long beach walks and began to make new friendships.

We enjoyed this amazing sunset thanks to our new friends we met via RVillage

And then the weather reports about Hurricane Matthew began. To make a long story short, we thought it was so slow moving, it’d never hit SC! All the talk around Pirateland (and the news) was about it and the hundreds of spaghetti models on the weather channel. So on October 5, we were forced to evacuate! 😳

Initially, we decided to go back to Bass Lake RV Campground. But the Governor suggested going at least 100 miles from the coast and we’d only be 70 miles inland. We had a few contingency plans. But then our daughter asked us to come back to Fredericksburg as both grandsons were sick. So why sit for a few days in Dillon when we could help our daughter and family? It was a no-brainer.

We’re excited because we found a place in Fredericksburg where we can now park our RV with full hook-ups. And we are only seven miles from our daughter. This is really a basic place, but that is OK. When we were here, we spend every day at our daughter’s home. We do miss a playground for our grandsons in the park, but there are a few close by. We are close to all our (including the grandson’s) doctor’s now as well as their daycare. We are also now back at Spotswood Baptist Church, which is only a mile away! It just doesn’t get better than this! 😇

We’ve now been back here in Fredericksburg for about a month – that’s how they rent the sites, on a monthly basis – so we’ll be heading back to Myrtle Beach to finish our time there. We did pre-pay for our time there and our reservation is on hold due to Hurricane Matthew.

A highlight of our short time in Myrtle Beach was captured in a short 15 second video of a sunset on the beach! We met a couple there via RVillage. They invited us down to their site to watch the sunset. If you can’t see the video, the picture above is a snapshot of it.

Today’s sermon packed a powerful punch that seems to go along with our lifestyle of late! One quote was how God uses the pressure in life to reveal the passion in life. Click here for more about the pressures of life, centered around Psalm 63, which was written by David when he was in the wildness of Judah. Here are the first five verses, that also translate into a beautiful hymn we had sung at our wedding:

O God, You are my God;
Early will I seek You;
My soul thirsts for You;
My flesh longs for You
In a dry and thirsty land
Where there is no water.
So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips shall praise You.
Thus I will bless You while I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.