B-B-B-BBQ and Myrtle Beach

We left Washington, NC around 7:00am because we had a long drive ahead. Tiff wanted to make a stop at her brother's old military base. We made it to the Marine Corp Air Station in Cherry Point, NC by 9 a.m.

Tiff's brother Joey recommended we stop at a restaurant for traditional NC bbq, Smithfield's, but they were not open. We got on the Costal Highway (17) and headed to Myrtle beach, South Carolina. After being on the road for two hours, we happened to pass by another Smithfield's.
Joey was right...that bbq was bangin'! We shared a large bbq platter, pulled pork shoulder with cole slaw, potato salad, and hush puppies. we also got a 4 piece bucket of chicken, gallon of sweet tea, and a hugh bag of fresh cracklin'. Lip smakin' good.

In the Carolina's, "bbq" is pork shoulder slow roasted, pulled, then finished with a sort of "mignonette". Instead of your typical ketchup based BBq sauce like most of us are used to, in the Carolinas they serve up their bbq with this amazing garlicky, white wine or cider vinegar with chili flakes. It was unreal!
The fried chicken was juicy, crispy, and delicious. The side salads were nicely seasoned and the sweet tea was refeshing. The $3.49 bag of pig skin definately put us over the edge.

We finished the last leg of our drive in a sort of food coma...I could not wait to get there.

We pulled into our campground around 4:30...fancy! Lakewood campgorund is more a resort than onything else.                                                     

With over 1000 campsites, you have the option of "wilderness camping", which is in the front half of the campground and covered with trees. We chose the opposite, beachfront camping, 3 spots from the beach!          

            

Once settled in, we took a walk to see the amenities. Heated pool, private beach, golf, 3 restaurants,boat rentals, golf cart rentals, arcade, coffee shop and more. Clay saw a flier for the Wednesday night "Southern Fish Fry", all-you-can-eat for $9. By now you can guess where we were heading.
A local restaurant has a fish and chip 5th wheeler and parks it next door to the campground swimming pool (about 20 feet from our campsite). Pollock, fries, coleslaw and hush puppies were on the menu, and you know we got our money's worth.                                                                     
Some how we managed to roll our fat asses back to our camper for our on-going game of Rummy and were alseep by 9 pm.

The following day we spent on the beach...that's right October 6th and on the beach! The ocean was warmer than the air. after swimming and napping under the sun, we went back and got the Shred Man. Today was great for him cause he learned to dig. Shred  must have dug a hole about three feet deep and it was hilarious. Drained from all that hard time spent in the sun, we sat around the camper that night and played cards and Bulldog Monopoly.

We woke up early the next day to rent a paddle boat and play mini putt. I of course chose the kelly green glitter boat. After talking smack about how I was going to beat Clay at mini golf I lost, but we did each have a hole in one. We wrapped up the afternoon at the beach then got showered and ready for round two of the southern fish fry. The couple who runs this bi-weekly tradition were extemely nice, and treated us to our meal that evening. Myrtle Beach was more than we could have hoped for!!