Pop quiz, hotshot: you're at the beach for a week and your family is already redder than a British soldier's uniform. What do you do?
Well, for one thing, you go souvenir shopping. Pawley's Island is famous for its hammocks for some reason. You're at the beach, there's a lot of downtime, palmettos litter the coast...I dunno. I'm sure there's a reason why people in that situation would want a hammock, but it's eluding me at the moment.
We stopped by
The Hammock Shops Village and naturally did not look at any hammocks. Rather, we concentrated on the toy shop, the candy shop, and the "let's see if we can get the dumb tourists to buy THIS crap" shop. It was here that I was sorely tempted to finally complete our fine china set, since we never did get everything we registered for at our wedding.
Being in the Myrtle Beach area, we also could not overlook the golf. There are over 100 regulation golf courses in the area, not to mention the number of mini-golf courses, which is...well, more than you can imagine.
(I don't know...I can
imagine quite a bit.)
We were going to use one of the ubiquitous (there's an SAT word for you) $1-off-for-everyone coupons to take the family mini-golfing, but we ended up with some early pixie dust: after choosing a course on the strict criteria that it looked fun from the highway, we pulled into the lot and a gentleman walked up to us as we were piling out. He had a free game coupon that he wasn't going to be able to use, so he gave it to us.
Here, Sarah celebrates a hole-in-one:
Not to be outdone, Dave followed up a couple of holes later:
No holes-in-one for Scotty, but he did conquer this fake rock. So he has that going for him, which is nice.
And, in a bit of foreshadowing, we got a glimpse of the backside of water:
Later in the week, my buddies and I got the chance to play some "real" golf. Or at least dress the part while losing golf balls. We played at a course called the
True Blue Plantation.
As you can see from the clubhouse, this is a relatively fancy-pants establishment. It was barely a mile drive from our rental home, so that was a plus. When we were looking for a tee time, we checked out the greens fees:
Maximum rate for the year: $200
Uh, not gonna happen.
Regular summer rate: $94 Survey says: (buzzer)
Summer afternoon rate: $79 Nope.
Summer-late-afternoon-twilight-after-4pm-rate: $49.
A bit higher than my game is usually worth, but ok for vacation. We booked a 4:00 tee time. My friend Greg and I would be playing, while my other friend Dave would simply be riding along. I asked the course ahead of time if he could ride, and they said no problem, and no charge.
So, when we walked into the clubhouse to pay our greens fee, of course they tried to charge a cart rental fee for Dave.
After standing our ground on that one, they relented and let us go. But, Dave could not bring the cooler of adult beverages with him. This, he was told, was for "liability" reasons. Really? You wouldn't happen to be selling beer in the clubhouse, would you?
Anyway, we got to the first tee under threatening skies. Huge dark thunderheads had built up, but we didn't see any lightning. Greg wondered if we should stay back, but I told him I'd keep playing. I didn't think the heavy stuff would come down for quite some time now.
It turned out that Pawleys Island weather was a little strange that way--storms would build and build and build, threaten an awe-inspiring show, and then just completely disappear. Kind of like the Philadelphia Eagles every year.
True Blue was designed by a golf course architect named
Mike Strantz, who sadly passed away a few years ago from tongue cancer, after only building a handful of courses in his career. It's a shame he's gone, because he had the eye of a true artist. Some of his more famous courses (among golfers, anyway) are Tobacco Road in North Carolina and the Monterey Peninsula Shore Course, which is part of the rotation in the PGA Tour's Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
3rd hole (island green):
12th hole:
16th hole:
Me taking a mighty rip. It's in the hole! Ok, not exactly.
But this was one of my better shots. Ended up about 10 feet from the pin.
The beautiful 18th hole. I snap-hooked a tee shot about 50 yards left into the pond here.
Also, not long after we teed off, we played a hole that went right past the clubhouse parking lot. So Dave (we were calling him Jarvis at that point, since he was serving as our caddy) took a right turn and rescued some adult beverages from the cooler he'd been forced to leave in the car. Mark's Buddies 1, Snooty Golf Course 0.
Let the record show that I lost 4 defective golf balls during the course of the round. However, Jarvis found 6, so we came out ahead.
Sticking with the golf theme, we found a short par 3 course in the area that the boys begged me to play. So I took them out while Julie and Sarah went shopping for a shark-tooth necklace (don't ask).
Scotty tees off. Note the golf-course appropriate visor with the inappropriate Animal t-shirt. And the oblivious drivers, who have no idea how much danger they're in right now.
Be the ball, Scotty. Be the ball.
Here, Dave takes a mighty rip. Still working on differentiating between a golf swing and a baseball swing. But then again, so am I.
Greatness courts failure, David.
Finally, we found that you get a lot less sunburned on the beach after the sun goes down. We got the kids some glowsticks and Julie played with the camera. Here, Sarah gives us an S for, well, Sarah:
Scotty does a "P" for Pawleys:
Dave didn't figure it out at first and decided to just become a ghost:
David! Don't go into the light!
So, as you can see, even when we weren't swimming, we were still having fun.
I'll leave you with one final image, since I have nowhere else in the report to put this but can't leave it out. The house had no shades on the windows in the dining room, which proved to be a problem at dinner time since the sun was directly in our eyes. So, to combat that issue, I give you...
Redneck Window Shades. Feel free to use this one at home. And you're welcome.
Coming Up Next: Somebody drops the ball and lets our family onto an aircraft carrier.
And don't worry about the movie quotes. They just save me from having to think of anything interesting on my own.And it's awesome to see your whole family enjoying the private beach even with the seaweed. But that sunburn... that's gotta stink! I'm so glad my minimal Italian blood only allows a burnt face. Hope the sunburns didn't get worse.
