Day 8: to Myrtle Beach, SC

We had told Manly that we'd be ready to be shuttled back to Beaufort around 10 this morning. I woke up at 7:15 to the sound of a motorboat approaching, and I sat bolt upright, thinking that Manly had probably mixed up the time. Neither Keith nor I are quite sure if anything we say to him actually registers in his head.

Thankfully, it was just a fisherman motoring past. And by the time Manly miraculously showed up at precisely 10:06, we were packed and organized and ready to go. We loaded everyone into the skiff, and Manly pulled up the anchor for the houseboat. We circled the skiff a little ways off shore, waiting for Manly to get the houseboat started up and pointed back toward Beaufort, so we could follow him. But after several minutes, he waved us back in and told us that there was a problem with the hydraulics and that we'd have to load all our gear into the skiff and leave the houseboat behind. He'll go back to fix it later. Keith and I worried that one of the switches we flipped in the middle of the night somehow caused the steering in the houseboat to conk out. Manly assured us that it wasn't our fault.

Back in Beaufort, the kids and I unloaded the skiff while Keith went to get the van and the trailer from some guy's driveway. Remember Craig, the sculptor who was thrilled to have an actual Teardrop parked in front of his house? Well, Keith got back to the car and discovered that he left us a complimentary Teardrop sculpture on the bumper. I guess he's not actually a woodworker, because this thing is made out of styrofoam and ... tape? It certainly was a very sweet gesture, but we're not exactly sure what to do with it.

I think the window was drawn in with a Sharpie marker.

We ate well on the boat, but the meals were simple and no-frills. So before we left town, we splurged on a tasty lunch of gazpacho, shrimp salad and pimento cheese gougeres (parmesan pastries) at the chi-chi Beaufort Grocery Co. Pimento cheese may be my new favorite North Carolina delicacy, although a little goes a long way. I had it on a BLT two years ago when we were in Asheville and it was fantabulous. I've never seen it anywhere else.

We got back on the road and pointed the car south toward Myrtle Beach. Three and a half hours later, we blew into the Embassy Suites -- part of a lush 145-acre resort complex of condos and cottages -- all sun-kissed cheeks and windswept hair, and with sand oozing out of every orifice.  There were cold outdoor showers at the Cape Hatteras campground, and a tiny stall on the houseboat with a shower head that dribbled lukewarm water, so it's been a week since we've bathed in any real, satisfactorily extravagant way -- like, with an actual spray of hot water. I booked this hotel stay knowing that we'd be due for showers and fresh laundry, and as a bonus, there's a giant beachside pool complex with a waterpark!



To get here, we drove through North Myrtle Beach, which doesn't seem to be anything more than a clustercuss of pancake houses, seafood buffets, and mega-themed mini-golf courses fronting six lanes of traffic. We have no desire to venture back out into that, so the plan is to camp out poolside all day tomorrow. Rough life, I know.