Putters and pancakes

So,the downside of blogging at work (and not having computer/internet at home) is that when I'm really busy at work, I don't get to blog. But here I am, so don't lose hope. I have a deadline coming up, and after that, the posts should pick back up.

Last weekend G and I went to Myrtle Beach, SC, for a conference (for G's work). The upside was that I got to just hang out while G was attending sessions and schmoozing. The downside was that the weather was very unpleasant. We watched a beautiful sunrise over the ocean from our room on Monday morning. By the time I got out of the shower, the sun had been swallowed up by clouds, and we didn't see the sun again until we got to Georgia.

The actual conference was a little bit north of Myrtle Beach, so while G was busy, I drove down to Myrtle Beach proper to check it out. It was very touristy (as I had expected), and not somewhere that I would like to vacation in the future. Although, I bet it would have looked like more fun if it was warm and sunny.

It seemed like there were only maybe five or six people that owned restaurants. This isn't to say that there weren't many restaurants - there were tons. But they were all the same ones. And not national chains. I must have seen six Calabash seafood restaurants in six miles.

However, it seems that the most popular businesses in Myrtle Beach are miniature golf and pancake houses. I didn't try to count them, but if I had, I'm sure I would have lost track. So many.

Miniature golf is understandable. Tourists like mini-golf. And each course has it's own theme, which encourages more mini-golf playing, I'm sure. I saw a Captain Hook course (it had a cave in the shape of a skull - you walked in the mouth), a course that was inside a giant pyramid, and my personal favorite, Minotaur Golf. The name of this last one is very clever, but I think they missed the boat a little. You might expect the course's theme to revolve around Greek mythology, but no, it was more dinosaur-ish. That's okay. I would go just for the name anyway. Plus, I really like dinosaurs.

What about the pancake houses? How many pancakes do tourists eat? Is that what tired families want? Pancakes? The only pancake house I'm familiar with is IHOP, and you might expect to see one of those in this pancake haven. But no, I didn't see any IHOPs. Hmmm. I almost wanted to eat at one to see what the hype was all about (there wasn't really any hype), but I don't really like pancakes all that much. They're just too light and fluffy. I like my pancakes dense, and that's not popular, I don't think.