Surf City Adventures (& Pickleball Camp)

This post is all about our 35th anniversary trips to Mount Pleasant, S.C., and to Surf City, N.C.

This year marks our 35th anniversary. Hard to believe we’ve been married that long; seems like only a few years ago that we met. And we had planned to mark it with a nice, big trip. But that soon turned into two smaller ones…both magical in their own way.

Last Minute Planning!

One Friday afternoon, we sat down on the living room couch and said, “Hey, we’ve got to decide on our anniversary trip. Let’s do some research.” So we both started looking up locations and ideas. Then Julie said, “Hey, there’s a pickleball camp this weekend in Charleston! Let’s go!”

Now, this would require leaving in just an hour or two and driving to the Charleston area (Mount Pleasant to be exact). But that didn’t deter Julie. After some research into the camp and some quick searching for a hotel, it was clear that this trip could indeed happen tonight!

Rick took some convincing, but since we’d only need to bring our pickleball gear and very little else, he agreed that we could pack in a jiffy and head out asap. Which we did. And arrived around midnight at our hotel, Tru by Hilton! Talk about spontaneous!

LevelUp Pickleball Camp

The camp was for Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 4pm (with a one hour lunch break). In the past when we had looked into camps, we ended up confused and frustrated because, well, who knows who these people are! Some rando could be teaching and we wanted someone who really knew their stuff! But the LevelUp camp we purchased was being taught by a former PPA pro, Scott Golden, so we felt like this was a safe way to go. We were both signed up for the advanced class (3.5 -4.5).

This camp was held at Pickleball Kingdom in Mount Pleasant, S.C. You can see what this indoor facility was like in the video below.

Unfortunately, with all the intense instruction, we have no other pictures or video from the camp. But we will tell you this: we are so happy we pulled the trigger. We learned so much from Scott and his co-teacher Larry. We highly recommend LevelUp camps if you can swing it!

Basically each day we would show up, warm up, and then the instruction would begin. After speaking to the group, our teachers would break us up into two groups (we had 13 students) and we would implement what had just been taught. Our teachers would watch us, and offer feedback and correction. On the first day, they took video of each student performing specific shots; at the end of the day, they went over our videos with us to help us see where we were getting things wrong and how to improve. We also played some fun games to break up the instruction.

Even though it was a little hectic planning and leaving last minute, we don’t regret a thing and hope to someday do another camp!

And now for Surf City

After that we figured we had better have another mini-trip but this time, just relaxing! Julie grew up in NC but in all that time, never went to Topsail Island. Going somewhere new seemed like a great idea so we booked an Airbnb condo right on the beach in Surf City. Then the research on TikTok began….where do people eat and what do they do in Surf City?

Although we were only there for two nights, we were able to see a lot of the entire island (not just Surf City) and also made sure to enjoy the TikTok dining recommendations we had collected. Below you can see the three videos we made documenting, in brief, our stay in Surf City.

So What’s the Verdict on Surf City?

Um…..loooooooove it!!!

In fact, we loved it so much we have reserved a return trip to the SAME CONDO for later this summer. And we both just fell in love with Surf City. It has such a relaxed vibe to it and kind of reminded us of a small town in Hawaii that we once visited for a few days.

Though we didn’t opt to rent bikes or walk from our condo, we really could have. Once you get into the hub of the town (coming right off the bridge) everything is so close! And so many great little food stops! Y’all….those donuts from Daybreak Donuts? #meltinyourmouth

So that’s a quick rundown of our anniversary trips.

What’s next for us?

Well, you can see on our blog page that we have four scheduled trips coming up.

1. Walt Disney World in early June
2. Major League Pickleball at Walt Disney World (ESPN Wide World of Sports) in late July/early August
3. Surf City NC (the same condo!) in mid August
4. PPA Tournament in Cary NC (late August/early September)

After that, who knows?