Sunday, November 9, 2008

Something Different and something the same

We had decided that as we were on the sand bar to the south of Wilmington we would take the ferry to Southport, cutting off a road journey of about 40 miles. After we had visited Fort Fisher we went and waited in line for the ferry and, with a bit of careful driving, were loaded on by the nice chaps who worked the ferry. It was about a 25 minute boat ride, down the Neuse River, passing the local features, such as the nuclear power station, I told you the area was a lot like Teesside. Passing a large oil tanker, watching the kite surfers. Not a bad excursion for $15, including the trailer. $5 for just a car. we really enjoyed being on the water, it blew away some cobwebs.
We drove down the coast to Myrtle Beach. 15 years ago this was a sleepy section of the South Carolina coast about 30 miles long. Its assets were that land was cheap, that it is a stretch of coast that does not have islands, so it has an easily accessible beach.
It has now been 'developed' It is now a 15 mile long strip mall. Business Route 17 runs parallel to the coast and is literally one shop, garage, crazy gold, mall, superstore, beachware store, restaurant, waffle house after another, for at least 15 miles. There are now more high rise buildings that Atlantic City (personal opinion, not fact). It has 118 golf courses (not including the crazy golf).
Still we have arrived here at the Myrtle Beach State Park campground and it is lovely. We have walked to the seashore and onto the pier, wher we watched loads of people catching loads of fish (called Spot, because it has a black spot just behind the gills, not because they didn't like the name Fido).

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