Myrtle Beach Day 3 - Huntington Beach

On Wednesday, day three of our trip, we took the advice of a blog reader and went to Huntington Beach State Park.  Admission to the park was very, very affordable and the park had a TON to offer - abundant wildlife, an education center, and 3 miles of beautiful beaches loaded with shells.

Our first stop was the education center.  There were many displays of live and stuffed local wildlife, including a baby alligator, and there were lots of the sorts of hands-on displays that are typical to nature museums.  There was even a large touch pool with fish, horseshoe crabs, and sting rays that the children could touch.  Once again, it was an ideal big-family attraction  - the little ones couldn't get enough of that touch pool while the older ones enjoyed really digging into the other displays and learning more about local wildlife.

Outside the education center was a small, real wooden boat for the children to explore.

(As you can see by her wet hair, Mary Faith REALLY liked the touch pool! I'm pretty sure she would have climbed in if we'd let her LOL.!)

After the spending some time in the education center, we struck out down one of the parks many trails.  This particular trail was paved (read "wheelchair friendly!!") and went right down the middle of a large freshwater area that was crawling with wild alligators!! 

The first critter we saw was a little bit less impressive than a gator, but much cuter.  It was a little lizard that Matthew caught so that Noah could touch and examine it up close.

Next was a blue heron.  Can you see it?  It's about half-way up the picture and a third of the way from the left.

Last, but most absolutely not least, was this guy . . .can you find him?  He was actually very close to us and Noah was totally thrilled.  The gators in the park very regularly cross right over the path we were on (there were no fences or anything), and Noah was hoping against hope that one would just walk out in front of us . . . to be honest, I think I would have screamed bloody murder and died of fear if that had happened.  This one was just barely far enough away not to scare me, but if it had started moving toward us I would have run like the wind.

Once you orient yourself to the location of the gator in the first picture, you should be able to spot it behind Noah in this shot.  This was a little 8 or 10 foot outcropping from the path leading right to the water, and I was glad that it had some sort of railing even though a gator could have easily walked beneath it.  :-)

We saw more alligators, some of which were massive (and blissfully far away) but it was hard to capture pictures with all of the grass.  As we were leaving, we saw one under the water with just its eyes and snout showing - that one was maybe 4 or 5 feet away.  Even though the path was in no way fenced and the gators were very free to cross it and walk on it, it was raised a couple of feet above the water.  That gave a sort of sense of security that if a gator had started to move nearer to us, we'd have had time to just walk away before it climbed up on the path.  We spoke to a local nature photographer who said that she's seen gators cross right in front of her hundreds of times!  I asked her if it didn't frighten her and she said that they are so intent on minding their own business that she doesn't see them as a threat at all.  She then told us that the really scary thing about that trail was that there were so many poisonous snakes (water moccasins and cotton mouths).  Now THAT scared me and I was glad that I learned that at the end of our walk rather than at the beginning.  :-)

Once we'd gotten our fill of wild gators, we took off for the beaches at the park.  The beach was nearly empty and the sand was simply loaded with beautiful shells.  Noah was very, very excited and was happy to get to step into the surf.  He laughed and screamed every time the waves hit him.  :-)  Unfortunately he was very, very unsteady on his feet that day (in the pictures of the touch pool you'll see that Hannah had to hold him up), and I had to hold him up so he could stand.  I wanted to enjoy that time with him, but eventually realized that I wanted to get pictures, so Jeff took over holding duty so I could grab my camera - - but by the time I did so, Noah was too tired to stand in the water any more.  He spent the rest of the time very happily playing in the sand.  It wasn't until we got home that I realized that I never did take pictures of him actually in the water . . .  but I can assure you that I'll never forget the pictures in my heart!

Noah drew one of his signature octopus pictures in the sand.  :-)

The entire park experience was truly lovely and very special.  It was completely different from the typical tourist attractions, and even though we had lots of fun at the more typical tourist things, this was one of the favorite things we did.  I'd HIGHLY recommend this to anyone visiting the area!

The rest of the afternoon and evening and the next day were spent doing something very, very special.  Some friends of ours were in Myrtle Beach the week before we went, and they stayed in a hotel with an indoor lazy river.  In order to grant us access to the lazy river, water park, mini golf, and all of the other amenities of the hotel, they purchased a one night stay for us.  The staff knew that we wouldn't be sleeping in the hotel and evidently our friends told them all about Noah because they knew exactly who he was and they welcomed us very kindly.  We had all of Wednesday afternoon/evening to enjoy the hotel, and were then able to use in Thursday morning as well.  Even though check-out was mid-morning, they told us we could keep the armbands and continue using the pools, lazy river, etc. for the entire day even after we'd checked out.

I don't have any pictures of Wednesday at the pools.  Noah fell asleep in the hotel room while the others were getting their suits on, and he didn't wake up until after 7 PM.  Since we were coming back the next day, I made the decision to ditch the camera and just enjoy playing with my children.  I used to take tons and tons of pictures of everything until one day I realized that I wanted to spend more time in the moment and less time behind a lens.  It can be hard to find the balance sometimes - after all, I do want pictures - but I hit it just right this time.  I had a ball with the older 6 children while Jeff got to enjoy snuggling with Noah while Noah and Mary Faith napped.  The next day I was able to take tons of pictures . . . which I'll share in my next post!

I'll plan to update tomorrow with Day 4 and a transfusion update.

Blessings,
Kate