Summer is flying by and so has our trip to Surfside Beach (just south of Myrtle) for the annual Hilgeman Family Summer Beach Trip. Here is a picture of the house – “Surfside 6″. 
We left Saturday morning around 8:45am and rolled into town around 5pm. We stopped off at the grocery store to pick up some food for dinner. The trip seemed to fly by and now here it is Friday, and we are wondering what all we did this week. On the way to the beach last year, we passed a fireworks stand just across the North Carolina/South Carolina border on Rt. 701. We just had to snap a picture of Rob standing in front of the sign. This year, when we passed by, we were sure to honk our hellos! 
On Sunday, we all got together and had dinner to celebrate Mom & Dad’s birthdays. Mom turned 60 the week before the beach and Dad turns 60 the week we get back. Rob & I had ordered Portillo’s hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches and brought them with us down to the beach for a celebration dinner. (Dad loves Portillo’s hotdogs and Mom loves the Italian beef sandwiches.) Portillo’s even shipped the sandwich/hotdog making hats which we bestowed upon the birthday boy and girl right before dinner. 
We enjoyed sleeping in until about 9am – a short-lived luxury especially since I will be commuting to Dahlgren on Monday morning (5am is going to come mighty early). We saw a lot of the sights last year since it was Rob’s first trip to the Myrtle Beach area so we decided that this year we would focus on relaxing and doing only what we felt like at the moment. We hung out by the pool a lot and also did a lot of walking on the beach. We swam around in the ocean one afternoon and watched a lot of wakeboarders and skimboarders. We went to Barefoot Landing to poke around through the shops and had lunch at Greg Norman’s Grille. We got some very YUMMY burgers and snapped a picture of us lounging on the couch in the bar area as well as outside on a bridge in the shopping area. 

On the way back to the beach house we stopped to see Journey to the Center of the Earth – 3D. Very cool family movie and the 3D action made it lots of fun! A few days later, we took Dad to see The Grand Canyon Adventure in 3D at IMAX. This was also very good and left us all wanting to take a trip to see the Grand Canyon in person. 
We also played 2 rounds of mini golf while dodging the rainstorms. We arrived at Runaway Bay Mini Golf course just as a thunderstorm was rolling in, but we weren’t scared… even with our metal lightning attracting putters! We waited for the lightning to pass out of the immediate area and then headed onto the course with our putters. There are two courses at Runaway Bay – Cockpit Country and Dunns River Falls. We got through the first 6 holes on the first course (Cockpit Country) before the sky opened up. We ran back through the course to the rocking chairs under the ledge and waited for the rain to pass. We got through the rest of the first course and then started on the second (Dunns River Falls). While we were playing the first hole, the sky opened up again. Conveniently, the first hole was located in a cave so we just stayed put and watched the rain pass by through the window-like openings. We got through 2 more holes before having to retreat back to the cave to dodge the rain again. The final downpour occured when we were on the 8th hole. Luckily there was a waterfall ledge that we were able to duck back under. We got to hole number 9 and both of our balls got stuck in the tube so Rob had to run back to the counter to grab two more. This seemed to be the end of our mini-golf drama as we were able to finish the rest of course without anymore rain or ball delays and the sun was actually shining by the time we were tallying up our final scores. Rob won the Cockpit Country course 53-55 and he also beat me on the Dunns River Falls course 43-44 which was not a big shocker considering this was the course where he had his two holes-in-one!
One night we went to decided we wanted to have some Mexican food and margaritas. We went to Abuelo’s for dinner - VERY DELICIOUS!!! We got our first round of margaritas from the bar while we were waiting on a table to open up. We were suprised to see that, being as they were “on the rocks”, they came out of the tap – sans rocks of course!!! We were more surprised to find out that we had shown up at Happy Hour and they were only $2 a piece. However, the best surprise was how good these “from the tap” $2 margaritas actually were!! We left the restaurant very stuffed and Rob was gracious enough to drive home since my two “from the tap” margaritas were quite margaritafying! Lucky for me that I found a man who can drive a stick-shift car!!
Friday night, our last night at the beach *sniff sniff*, we went out to dinner at Drunken Jack’s down in Murrell’s Inlet. We got our picture taken with Drunken Jack himself (or at least the statue version of him) as well as a picture of us sporting our pirate hats! 

We also had our annual Hilgeman-Williams Golf Tournament (Par 3 of course!) on Friday night. Last year, the Williams family (my sister Kelly, brother-in-law Rick, and nephew Ricky) took home the trophy. This year, we challenged them and lost – AGAIN! Maybe next time we’ll have better luck… We also decided that next time it would have to be the Fowler-Williams Golf Tourney as Rob & I will be Fowlers and my Dad will be the only Hilgeman on the team and therefore outnumbered 2-1. Although, I suppose we could be nice on him and keep it “Team Hilgeman”.
Below is a picture of Rob putting for par. He made it!
Saturday made for a long drive back to Maryland. We were sad to leave and even more sad that we won’t be returning next year. The plan, as of now, is to forego our annual beach trip for a Thanksgiving trip to Disney World in 2009!
Lookout Mickey, here we come!!