Fort Jackson-Alvarez's-Myrtle Beach

Wed. Fort Jackson has a family day for those who are graduating on Thur.The ceremony they have is pretty impressive.  It is held at Hilton Field.  Shannon had one of her friends on base get us on base so we could see the event.  Top left picture is Andrew Jackson a native of SC and  which the army base is named after. Middle top shows the parking for the field.  Top right is a exercise if a terrorist came.  They covered the field with smoke in the middle picture you can see the American flag in the middle.  They had four batons come out of the smoke which they were in the woods and could not see them at all.  They spoke what the soldiers went through in the last 10 weeks.  They have a graduation each week and Al’s is not till the beginning of May.  When the event was over we went to the Army museum.  Out side they  had equipment from World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. Inside tells of the changes from WW1 to modern Army.  It tells of the training they have to go through.  Al is in the final phase with his troop which is out in the field which takes four or five days. When we got back to the rig we heard a noise in one of the storage areas.  To make a long story short the elec. wires were getting burnt in the elec. post we hook up to.  We had to move the rig they could not fix the wires today.  After we got moved we went to church then came home exhausted and went to bed.

Thur.  We got up ate and did our bible study.  Linda did laundry and I washed the car.  We called two folks to see how the generator works.  We both feel more confident.  We went to Shannon’s after lunch  and Linda made gravy for a crockpot pot roast dinner that Shannon had started this morning.  After we ate we went to LiliMarie’s softball game. Which her team won.  Afterwards we went for ice cream.

Fri.  We both woke up early so we started our day.  At noon we picked up Diego and LiliMarie at middle school and took them to their home so LiliMarie could get ready for her girl scout week-end.  I went and picked up Xander at his school.  We dropped LiliMarie off at the base and the rest of us came to the rig.  I played a game with Xander then the four of us played chicken foot.  The boys and I made a fire and went to the park while Linda cooked our hobo’s.  Shannon got here and we ate the hobo’s and went back to the park.  On our walk it started to rain so we waited in a shelter.  Some of the folks also there offered the boys bread so they could feed the ducks.  When we got back to the rig we made smore's YUM YUM.  We played 31 and pass the ace. 

Sat.  We picked Diego up and drove to Spartanburg, where Xander and Shannon (the elem. school archery coach) had an archery tournment.  Top left Xander is coming in with his scorecard. The rest of the pictures is him shooting and the team picture.  Xander on knee front left and Shannon 2nd left in rear of picture.There team got 2nd Place.  When we got home we did our jobs for getting ready to leave.

Sun. We got up ate did our Bible Study then got things ready to leave.  On our way out we had to stop by the dump station and get the rig cleaned out.  We drove to Myrtle Beach and found a camp site right next to the Ocean!!  It is cool here so we have not run the a/c and have our windows open listening to the waves.  We took a 2 mile walk on the beach.  On the way we saw a man flying kites(bottom 3rd picture).   We had dinner then to church.  After church we drove from N. to S. Myrtle Beach. Some parts are very commercialized with lots of chain restaurants and lots of places to stay.

Mon.  Linda got up early to watch the sunrise.  The first picture is from the rig and the second she took from the beach.  We took a long walk to the Myrtle Beach State Park Pier as you can see they had a very large chair there.  We also took in the sunset which had a lot of clouds.

Tues.  Another great sunrise.  We both enjoyed seeing it.  We also enjoyed a 2 1/2 mile walk  along the water.  There were many jelly fish that had washed ashore, We took a short a bike ride. After playing Skip-bo (each of us won a game) we went in the lazy river and a swim ia a heated swimming pool where we did some exercises.  I went to the ocean to see if the waves were big enough to ride.  A little disappointed they were to small.  After dinner we went for another walk in the park.  We saw the sunset but the trees were in the way from seeing it.  We played one more game of skip-bo and Linda Won.  

Wed.  We drove to Murrells Inlet(first top three pictures) on our way to Huntington Beach State Park.  Our good friends the Botts told us about it.  Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington bought the land in the 30's. Before that it was a rice farm then a hunting lodge.  The house named Atalaya that they built was Spanish in style.  Not only did they build there home in the depression  and was the biggest employer in the county he bought some land for the black folks so they always had a place to live. Before our guided tour of the house we went on a 8 mile bike ride in the park and the close neighborhoods.  Top right we sat back in huge chairs when we got to the park. Bottom left two pictures are two of the many sculptures Anna has done.  On our bike ride we rode up to the gate at Brookgreen Gardens where a lot of her sculptures are.  We would have loved to had more time to go their.  The next picture is an old tree which we thought would be a great back drop.  We went to two bakery's bottom right we ate the lemon muffin so fast we forgot to take pictures.  The next bakery we got homemade bagels for Thur.  

The house was different than any house I have ever seen. First picture is outside the house, second is front entry and third the front door with Atalaya which means tower.  They had no need for a tower but they wanted to give it that name so the built a tower and made it a water tower to water everything with gravity.   top right is the long hall way leading to the front door. 2n bottom from left is there living room.  3rd picture is Archer's shower with seven shower heads.  Bottom right is servants living room area where they hung out eating to be busses when needed.  When we got home we ate then to church.