Day 1

Depart at 7:45am Columbia, MD: Sunny, Clear, 34 degrees

We managed to get everything to fit in the Blazer. We decided to leave the tent and sleeping bags behind because we decided it would be more trouble than it was worth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We left cold, slushy, dreary Maryland and headed south slightly earlier than planned at 7:45am

 

 

 

 



(Kelly accidentally deleted our picture of the "Welcome to Virginia" sign...we will try again on the way back!)

 

 

The drive south was pretty much the usual boring drive down I-95 until we reached North Carolina. Our first discovery is that large sections of North Carolina smell like trash for some reason.

 

 

 

 

On our way to our first rest stop at Rocky Mount, NC we saw a giant billboard for Gardner's Barbeque, and it looked good and more importantly the logo looked funny, so we stopped for lunch. It turned out to be a buffet type thing with lots of southern food and lots of fat people with southern accents stuffing their faces. I didn't particularly like the BBQ, but everything else was good.

 

 

 

We then headed into downtown Rocky Mount, and looked for the only attraction that interested us, the Battle Park falls, a small waterfall near the downtown area. See more about our visit there by clicking here.

After seeing the falls, we headed back to I-95 and headed south. Then we realized we were only a few miles away from something we had seen on the Roadside America website, Vollis Simpson's Wirlygigs. You have probably seen his artwork near federal hill in Baltimore at the Visionary Art Museum. Anyways, the man does nothing but produce thousands and thousands of these things, and although he is friendly he hardly looked up from his welding torch for more then a few minutes. See more pictures of our visit to his house here.

 

A couple hours later we had left North Carolina and the Big-Bunny mobile was into South Carolina. We first visited South of the Border, which is a huge mexican themed land of tacky giant animals and mexican figures. See some pictures of it here. We visited the South Carolina info center after that, and asked if they had any coupons for hotels in Myrtle Beach, luckily they did and we headed off to Myrtle Beach. The trip there seemed like the longest part of our journey. We only had about 60 miles to Myrtle Beach, but on the small two lane highways and with the frequent number of stop lights, it seemed like we would never get there. Finally, though, we did, and thanks to the off-season rates we were able to stay on the top floor in one of the nicest rooms of one of the nicest hotels right on the beach for only $45! See our pictures here.

 

Arrive at 6:30pm at Myrtle Beach, SC: Partly Cloudy, 43 degrees