Traveling During a Pandemic: Our Family Road Trip to Myrtle Beach

2020 was a year unlike any other. There was so much we couldn't do during the pandemic, including going on our usual Summer vacation to the beach. It turned out that we just needed to rethink our travel plans!

Like so many other families, we were being careful, and avoiding travel, especially to hotspots. As Summer neared an end, we decided we would look for a condo at a beach, since Fall isn't a peak time for beach travel. We knew we were going to have to wear masks, and we knew the weather was going to be cooler, but we just wanted to get away after the craziness of the year. 

We ended up finding a big condo in Myrtle Beach, for an INCREDIBLE deal, at the end of September. We immediately booked it, then invited my dad to join us. We had never taken anyone on our family vacation, and we had never gone during the school year, so we were excited to try something different! It ended up being a great vacation full of fun memories. We are officially less than a month away from our 2021 beach vacation, so I figured I would do a quick recap of our pandemic vacation before I start packing for our next trip!

Myrtle Beach Family Vacation - Reminiscing About The Last Day

It has been almost one full year since our last family vacation. If you have been following along for a while, you already know it was a big one. While we were in Myrtle Beach, we found out we were expecting baby #5! And the rest is history...

My final Myrtle Beach family vacation recap got lost in my drafts folder during those 9 very long months of morning sickness, and those exhausting early days with a newborn. Because I tend to be very particular about some things, I can't just leave it hanging around in there. I have to finish my recap, or else it will bug me until I do!

Right now seemed like a good time to recap, and I found myself reminiscing as I finished writing this post. Sadly, we're not going to the beach this year, and it's my happy place. I'm very bummed (my husband and kids are, too), but traveling that far this year was going to be very tough. It's a combination of adulting, and having a new baby who DESPISES the car.

Every so often I want to say let's just do it, then I imagine being tethered by a breastfed baby who likes to eat all the time, while my 5 year old runs in the opposite direction toward danger, and I change my mind. Plus, 8-12 hours each way of Coen screaming would be rough. But I want to - I really want to - and if we didn't have to get a new SUV or pay for some home repairs, I would go anyway. So I'm just going to look through all of these pictures when I feel a longing for the beach, and count down the time until we can go back. (But not too fast, because my kids need to slow their grow!)

Here's what we did on the last day of our Myrtle Beach vacation, and on our trip home...