Myrtle Beach State Park

 Wednesday, Feb 7

Jane’s brother, Dave and his wife, Mary drove down from Winston-Salem for a couple of days. Mary booked a nice suite 2 miles from our condo for a reasonable price. We invited them to join us for cinnamon rolls Wednesday morning. I had packed up everything in advance and had only to get up early to let the dough rise twice. I’d had the foresight to buy parchment paper and a rubber spatula. I suppose buying a rolling pin and ruler would have been over the top. I pushed the dough into a rectangle with my hands, but it ended up thicker and smaller than it should have been. No one complained.

Wednesday breakfast

We spent the day talking and doing a jigsaw puzzle. We went out to dinner at a nice local restaurant, The Shack.

Thursday, Feb 8

Jane and I were up early the next morning to take Jan to the airport. Her cousin had collapsed and died shortly after retirement, and the funeral, family dinners, etc. were Thursday and Friday. She would fly back Saturday.

We got together with Dave and Mary again after breakfast. After frittering away the morning (again), Dave and Jane took naps while Mary and I had a long walk on the beach. We then took a drive by Russel Burgess and Heritage Shore again. There weren’t many birds. We tried a new ice cream shop, Melt, that was right on one of the main streets of North Myrtle Beach. I had mint chip. It had a sufficient number of large chocolate shards.

Mint chip from Melt

Friday, Feb 9

Dave and Mary left early to go back home. Jane and I headed to two state parks on the south side of Myrtle Beach.

First we stopped by Heritage Shore, where this little belted kingfisher was sitting on the pier looking glum.

Belted Kingfisher looking glum

At Myrtle Beach State Park, we sat on a bench and watched the bird feeder for a few minutes. What I thought at first was a prodigious amount of fungus growing from a log turned out to be peanut butter. A tufted titmouse couldn’t get enough!

A tufted titmouse can't get enough peanut butter

We also saw more butterbutts, which could also be called butter wingpits.

Butterbutt (yellow-rumped warbler)

Butter wingpit

And a yellow warbler.

Yellow warbler

Jane perused the gift shop by the beach while I walked up the beach and back on a boardwalk. This was a better shelling beach than back by the condo, as witnessed by the shellers. My apologies to the woman whose ass is prominently displayed. I didn’t realize when I took the photo.

Shellers shelling by the seashore

Seashells and a bit of coral

I cut back to the parking lot that eventually led to the board walk and immediately came upon a magnificent southern live oak. Breathtaking.

A magnificent live oak

I didn’t seem much else on my walk back to meet Jane. We went to Huntington Beach State Park next. Due to the number of photos, I’m going to cover that in a separate post. Check back soon!