Welcome to day 29 of 31 Days of Heterotopias: Motels and Hotels, a month of posts about how motels, hotels, and inns function as heterotopias and liminal spaces in society.  (More about heterotopias and liminal spaces.)  Each post will look at these ideas from its own vantage point, which may not obviously connect with the others, and which may mention motels and hotels only peripherally or may focus on them without referencing heterotopia or liminality. I won’t attempt to tie the posts together. They’ll all be listed here, as they are posted.

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I grew up going to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for summer vacations with my dad and sisters, and in recent years we (spouse and I) have considered retiring in that area, so in June 2014 we stayed in a condo there for a couple of days to look around at houses and amenities and get a feel for the place now.

When we went, three summers ago, we reserved a one-bedroom oceanfront condo at the Wyndham Towers on the Grove in NMB three weeks ahead of time for $255 per night. Looks like about the same pricing for June 2018. Off-season prices are quite low, with availability of $102 per night for a 1-BR oceanfront, and for a week around Christmas (18-26 Dec), a 1-BR oceanfront is going for $62/night! Hmmm ….

The Wyndham Towers on the Grove is actually a timeshare condo building, and when we checked in we could have had a reduction in cost and some goodies if we sat through a sales pitch for one. Having done the condo-sales-pitch thing once before in New Orleans (hours of my life that I will never get back), and with only 2 days to spend here, we decided against it. (We’re not looking for a condo to retire to, particularly not one that’s a quasi-hotel.)

As a hotel, the place is fabulous. It’s on the beach. View from room:

The hotel room is really two full, separated rooms plus a real kitchen with stovetop and oven, dishwasher, sink, cabinets (with bowls, plates, glasses in them), fridge, microwave, coffee maker, etc. The bedroom is the first room you walk into (in ours; layout varies by unit), then through the galley kitchen to a living room and balcony overlooking the ocean and the pools below — there are outdoor heated pools, a hot tub, plus a lazy river partly underneath the building.

In all, the space was almost 400 square feet, with two TVs and a washer and dryer in the unit. The wifi worked well once we got some kinks ironed out. Parking in a big garage across the street was a bit of a pain, but that inconvenience was totally offset by having the washer and dryer in our condo.

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In Myrtle Beach — part of the 60-mile Grand Strand — the beach is the thing and that’s where we spent most of our time when we weren’t driving through neighbourhoods looking at houses.

As I recall, from the condo we could walk to a grocery, a couple of restaurants, a few souvenir shops.

It’s much quieter in North Myrtle Beach than in Myrtle Beach proper. A drive from the hotel but still in the North Myrtle Beach area are ziplining (Go Ape in Little River, SC), mini-golf, arcades, bowling, a winery, music shows, a small boardwalk, and Barefoot Landing, a sort of golf resort and upscale eating/shopping area — with 100 stores, restaurants, and attractions — that’s also home to Alligator Adventure and Alabama Theater. We ate at the Joe’s Crab Shack there.

And of course Myrtle Beach itself has the boardwalk and is an extravaganza of amusement parks, the Skywheel, Ripley’s Believe it or Not franchises (Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium museum, Aquarium, 5D Moving Theater, Haunted Adventure, and Marvelous Mirror Maze), pirate-themed attractions, museums, outlet shopping, eating, brewpubs, beachfront bars, golfing (including many mini-golf and par-3 courses), on and on. Broadway on the Boardwalk, on the Route 17 bypass, is a “shopping complex set on 350 acres … with 3 theaters, 17 restaurants, more than 100 specialty shops, attractions, nightclubs, and 3 hotels, surrounding Lake Broadway. It is the largest festival entertainment complex in South Carolina. It has an IMAX theater, Ripley’s Aquarium, Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, and The Pavilion Nostalgia Park.”

South of Myrtle Beach are Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, Huntington Beach State Park, and quite a bit further south in the state are the Yawkey Wildlife Center, the Santee Coastal Reserve, and the 400-square-mile Francis Marion National Forest. We’ve spent a little time in the Francis Marion National Forest but not much.

We didn’t actually do anything in Myrtle Beach itself, except drive through a bit of the town (on a Sunday morning) — so many little motels! —

and then divert to Route 17 …

… for the drive south of Myrtle Beach to Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet.  We really enjoy this hybrid sculpture garden with plantings, a short boat tour, historical signage and sculpture related to rice plantations and slavery, wild and tame animals (some in cages and some not), etc. I posted lots of photos (and some info about Brookgreen) in July 2014 from that visit.

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Christmas at Myrtle Beach has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

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