I woke up around 8 the next morning and a little frustration to get out. So with Mom still asleep, I put on my gray ROH shirt and navy blue shorts, went downstairs, and ran for 15 minutes on the treadmill. Didn't have a slew of options, this gym had two treadmills, a bike, a TV, and a water cooler. Not exactly a deluxe gym, but at least the machines worked, which hasn't been the case at my home gym lately. Just before I got on, the machine, a large man with a dark goatee walked up to me and asked “You like wrestling?” Turns out this guy is not only a co-manager of the hotel, but he had been wrestling for 30+ years. He wouldn’t give his name out, but he did say he had been teaming with Robert Gibson lately. It certainly wasn’t Ricky Morton, I’d know him immediately. I got Q and Jerome on the case and we didn’t get very far. But after researching a few websites, I think it may have been Bobby Doll. I thought that was the bass player in Poision...
After my run, I went outside and soaked in the hot tub alone for about 20 minutes. There was still a bit of a chill in the air, but the tub felt very relaxing. I came back to the room and showering, then we left around 10 AM for Barefoot Landing. Mom’s main job was to gather information for the tours and figure out food options, shopping options, and drop-off points for the tourists. We didn’t stay very long, Mom wanted to get to Broadway at the Beach. We just felt that would be a place we could spend a little bit more time. As we drove up, I recognized the huge pyramid shape of the Hard Rock Café. On my mission trip, we had dinner there and I ate steak. Everyone else was getting burgers and salad. Even then, I thought nothing of dropping 20 bucks on some sirloin. Some things don’t really change.
We always try to eat at places we can’t access in Chicago so we decided to eat at a restaurant called Key West Grill. The owners are from Key West and while the place was mostly empty, we thought the Cuban and Latin concept of the restaurant sounded intriguing. We had a really cool waiter named Jimmy, whose wife is actually from Montgomery, IL, about 25 minutes from where I live. I started with a cup of conch chowder, a word I mispronounced for at least 30 minutes. But the weather was 50 degrees or so and I was dressed in a black t-shirt and cargo shorts. Chowder seemed to make sense. The broth was red in color and rich in flavor. It had several vegetables in it as well and it really warmed me up. Mom got a Torch chicken dish, which she enjoyed. As for me, I got the Cuban sandwich with mango mustard and sweet potato fries. I have become a big Cuban sandwich fan in the last two years and this one was up there with the better ones for sure. The bread was very crusty, the pork was tender, and the mustard had a little bit of sweetness to it. And the sweet potato fries are always a welcome addition to my lunch. I really wonder why fast food places like Burger King and Wendy’s don’t add SPF to their menu.
I hadn’t had dessert the previous two days. But at a joint that prides itself on Key West, I knew I was going to top the meal off with a slice of key lime pie. But Jimmy recommended this one dessert, the banana caramel fried cheesecake. I’ve had fried cheesecake once or twice and it’s not one of my favorites. But I figured with banana and caramel it sounded pretty enticing, so I went with it. Ten minutes later, Mom got her free sundae which was not exactly a single scoop. I get a plate of two large crispy tortilla shells stuffed with banana cheesecake filling and rolled in cinnamon sugar. They were resting on a large scoop of vanilla ice cream, which was then topped with more cinnamon sugar. If that wasn’t enough, this dessert was accompanied by two nice dollops of whipped cream and a garnish of caramel sauce and cherries. I hesitate to say anything is the best. But this dessert is a definite top 3 or 4 in my list. It goes right up there with the banana cream pie at Emeril’s, the peach cobbler at Fleming’s, and the cheesecake at Junior’s.
By the time we got back outside, I was getting colder. I remembered I left my coat in the car and on a day when people around me were walking with wool winter hats on, I could have used a coat. We stopped in a couple of shops like Tiki Jim's, and Sports Heroes, and a couple that probably interested Mom and not me as much.
We left there around 2 PM or so. We headed back south and stopped at the Myrtle Beach Flea Market. Mom picked up some magnets and keychains which she will be using as prizes for the games during the tour. Other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot to get excited about at the Flea Market. We made it a point to play mini-golf and with the weather getting cooler, we knew we had to play quickly. Unfortunately, most of the good ones are in North Myrtle Beach and we were already in the South Strand. We went to one place that cost 8 bucks a head, but it was a pretty simple, basic course. We hit four holes-in-one between us, which is saying quite a bit for the ease of the course.
We thought about going to the Dixie Stampede that night, but I wasn’t psyched about with watching a horse show. So we headed back to the room and chilled for a little while. For dinner, we headed down Murrell’s Inlet to Flo's Place, a Cajun/Creole restaurant. We ate some fried alligator and fried green tomatoes to start. They weren’t too bad, but I really prefer the bigger chunks of gator at Pappadeaux. For dinner, Mom got a mixed seafood grill platter of shrimp, scallops, and Mahi, which I would have gotten if she hadn’t. So instead, I opted for the Bayou Special, which the menu described as crawfish and shrimp served with garlic butter. What I got was a huge bowl of herb/garlic butter filled with about a dozen whole, unpeeled shrimp and 20 full crawfish. I wasn’t getting tails, I got the whole thing. Now, the shrimp were a little messy, but I’ve peeled plenty of shrimp in my lifetime. The crawfish were a different story. On TV, I’ve seen people have crawfish boils and the snap off different parts of the crawfish and eat other parts. All I knew was the tail was a good part. I had to pick these things out of the butter and cut into them to get the edible stuff out. After the fifth one that I had basically demolished, I found out I had to suck the head and the eat tail. So for the last 15 or so, I sucked head and extracted a few clean tails. It took a long time to get through the bowl, but Mom was impressed that I even tried to eat that stuff. And her shrimp and scallops tasted phenomenal. Crème brulee for dessert.
Feeling stuffed, we headed back for the night. I watched Hitch on TBS and I thought it was a pretty good film. I did think that the first half was funnier than the second though. The dancing scenes with Will Smith and Kevin James woke Mom up from her slumber and she just shook her head in sadness and pity.
We were up on Sunday at 5 AM and began driving to Raleigh around 5:45. We stopped at the legendary South of the Border tourist stop on 95 right at the NC/SC border. From the outside, it was the absolute campiest corniest place I’ve ever seen. With the Old West/Mexican design and the empty parking lots, I thought it was be a good place to film a horror movie. Our stay there consisted of two minutes and a few snickers (not the candy bar).
Before we went to the airport, we had some extra time, so we drove by our old home, 517 Berwick Valley Lane. Nothing has changed much over there, just a few new housing complexes where there was once vacant lead. But a lot of the same stores are still in business 7 years later. I guess that’s good. We grabbed a couple of sandwiches and sesame cookies from the Manhattan Café and headed back to RDU.
The flight seemed pretty uneventful. I mostly listened to the last episode of Blueshirt Banter that I had missed from the previous Wednesday. As we descended into the midwest, I noticed there were a ton of clouds and it was taking a long time to see any land. When I did, I saw so many huge sections of white on the ground. I knew I was almost home.
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