Sickness Strikes!

Sunday, March 27th – Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – Day 47

The generosity of the South Carolina people shows no end. The church group we were hanging around with had offered us their fire, they’d let our children play with theirs, given us some delicious dessert and now, Henry, our new best friend, went a step further. He had booked an extra night at Myrtle Beach State Park but wasn’t going to use it and offered it to us. Thank you Henry and family!

We wanted an extra night because we had been moving quite a bit and wanted to take a breathe for a moment. Also, Gen and I felt like death. The kids woke up early and went to the play structure. We stayed in bed. Our hypothesis was mild food poisoning from the beans or broccoli in the chili the night before. We had reasons to suspect both.

Eventually we had to get up and get moving. We went to talk to Henry about switching sites. He refused to let us give him some money. The kids were still playing in the park with their friends while Gen, Mary and I moved everything to the new site. Gen and I then promptly went back to bed. I set an alarm for 2pm because there was a Nature Story activity at the Nature Centre. The alarm went off, I dragged myself out of bed and drove the 5 minute walk to the nature centre.

The Nature Story Time was a book about turtles from birth to coming back to the same beach to lay their eggs. Each page had a new foe coming for the turtle and the kids had to shout “Turtle, turtle, watch out!”. The saddest part was the plastic bag that the turtle tried to eat because it looked like a jelly fish. After the story was over, we looked at the aquariums again and they had some skulls and skins the kids could touch and feel.

Still feeling nauseous Mary and I took the kids for a hike. We saw a pond with a loon and turtles. A rat snake was slithering through the leaves. The Devil’s walking stick was a pretty cool tree that was thin, straight as an arrow and covered in thorns. We came out of the woods and arrived at the pier. We walked out looking for wild aquatic life with no luck but we did spot an ice cream counter.

We arrived back at the play structure from the day before and after a few minutes Gen, still a bit under the weather, found us. I promptly went back to bed for the rest of the day. The kids returned and were crazy. They kept jumping on me. They had no sympathy for their poor dad. Gen made spaghetti which I wanted no part of.

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