How To Drop $3 Large During 1 Week in Myrtle Beach, SC and NOT Have Even 1 Strip Club Experience Under Your Belt, Numero Tres

In the continuing saga of issuing reports from Central Accounting regarding the recent Spring Break Family Vacation, I'd like to revisit something I touched briefly upon in Part 1.

See . . . here's the part that no one tells you. Taking kids to the beach for vacation has VERY LITTLE to do with the actual beach.

You'd think that by the time you square away a nice place to stay on the beach and with pools in close proximity, you would have it made in the shade, right?

Oh, dear reader . . . you could not be MORE mistaken!

Here's the thing. Kids tire of sand in their crack pretty quick. The few that DON'T tire of it can't stay out on the beach all the time, cause they would fry like earthworms on a hot sidewalk.

So, the enterprising parent soon figures out that the vacation must be supplemented with extracurricular kiddie fun.

Enter the Family Fun Centers. In Myrtle Beach, this pretty much centers around a few core activities:

Putt Putt
The Putt Putt courses at Myrtle Beach are like none I have ever encountered. They are 1 part Vegas, 1 part Disney World, and 1 part Master's Tournament in Augusta. I fully expected to see people win green jackets at the end of these things. Here's a few pictures to detail the fantabulousness that makes these courses worth $40-$50 a game (for a family of 4):

When you tire of Putt Putt, there are a few other diversions to capture the hearts of your crumb snatchers (not to mention the extra few dollars in your wallet). This little ride was situated in an outdoor mall, along with a ferris wheel and a couple of other little rides. At $3 a ride per kid, well, these little tooth chippers probably paid the rent on the whole damn place, my guess.

One of the coolest things we stumbled across was a bowling alley situated inside a (once) fabulous (used to be) beachfront resort.

This place had at one time, evidently, been THE PLACE to be, until some moneygrubbing bastard sold the property adjacent to them for a stacked parking lot and turned their oceanview rooms into parkinglot view rooms.

But, you know, they turned lemons into lemonade.

The floor that got screwed by the parking deck? They just said "fuck it" and built one of the most awesome bowling alleys I have ever been in in my entire life.

This place was top notch, state of the art. The attendants typed in your names when you came in the door, and even coded the lanes so that the gutters would pop up ball guards when the kids were up to bowl.

The screens were animated with little cartoons that played after every bowler's turn to let you know how many pins you hit. Totally mechanized.

But to hell with ALL of that . . .the thing that turned this place from cool to awesome was the light up furniture and the nonstop Cosmic Bowling! Even the bar was bathed in cool, everchanging neon!

Totally worth $28 bucks a game for 4 (with shoes, which are sorta mandatory, I guess, it jumped to $36. We played twice.)