On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I have a conference call that goes until 6pm. So I usually can't go out and run until it's dark. But today I decided to see if I could take the call from the Park. It turned out to be a great decision.
I was still home when the meeting started. Based on the agenda, my part wasn't until the end. So I walked over to the Park and listened while the other presenters talked. I watched the geese and admired the hazy skyline.
By the time my turn came around, I was on the East side of the reservoir.
It was relatively quiet where I was, until a few helicopters flew overhead. I hadn't planned on that.
The meeting ended just as the sky was starting to glow.
Perfect timing. I ran up the track a little to put the clouds where I wanted them in relation to the El Dorado Towers.
I've never been to the South before (not including Florida), so I was excited. The trip spanned 5 days and covered 4 cities: Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Hilton Head, and Savannah. Here's a recap of my trip in pictures, with a few sentences to string the story together.
Day 1 and 2: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
I arrived in Myrtle Beach and went straight to the store. Day 1 was rainy and cold, so all I did was work and eat. Here's day 2:
The store is in a complex called Broadway at the Beach. It's not quite on the beach, but there is water there. And sea gulls.
Most of my time on these trips is spent in the stores. The second store I visited in Myrtle Beach is in Barefoot Landing. It has a lot of mosquitoes.
All those specks in the sky are mosquitoes.
I don't leave the store until it closes, so it's almost always dark.
Day 3: Still Myrtle Beach
I woke up early (a la 5:30am) to catch the sunrise on the beach.
The moon was still up, but the sun wasn't yet.
Not bad for a point and shoot, huh? (Using the Canon G7X):
I ran through the pier over to hang out with some sea gulls.
The sun peeked out from behind the horizon and rose much faster than I had anticipated.
I ran over to the pier to try to get an artsy shot between the pillars.
I ran back along the beach.
Hey look! My footprints!
I went back to the hotel and slept for a few hours, then spent the entire day in the stores. At night, I drove down to Charleston. Before entering the city, you cross this bridge.
That's all I saw of Charleston because the next morning, I woke up early to drive down to Hilton Head.
Day 4: Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Most of the drive was pretty uneventful. Pretty. And uneventful.
The store is old but the manager and staff are fantastic! They suggested we grab lunch at Chow Daddy's - and now I recommend it too. It was so good!
I had the pulled chicken over mashed potatoes and it was ridiculously good.
Unlike Myrtle Beach, this store closed at 6, just before sunset. So we headed to the beach.
After dinner, I worked from the hotel for a little bit and then headed back out to the beach at midnight. I've never taken pictures of stars before. Here's my first attempt:
Pretty cool, huh?
Can you see the big dipper in this one?
Day 5: Savannah, Georgia
Morning came way too fast, but I got up and drove to Savannah. On the way, we (I was traveling with Janelle at this point, the Regional Sales Director for the area) stopped at a French bakery owned by the Hilton Head manager's father. It was a treat!
We got a warm welcome at the Savannah store too.
Did you know that Savannah has one of the largest St. Patrick's Day celebrations in the world? Right? Well Del Sol has a pirate cut out that they repurpose as a leprechaun for the celebration. Needless to say, it attracts a lot of photos.
I spent the whole day in the store, with the exception of eating shrimp and grits (yum!) for lunch. We shut down around 7pm and passed through this square on the way back to the car.
From here I drove halfway back to Myrtle Beach and then the other half the next morning to catch an early afternoon flight back home to New York.
I started out in the 90's and ran around the Tennis Courts for a while. Oddly enough, I don't have a single picture of the tennis courts though. Some other time. Here's a path to the north of the Tennis Center though:
These are some of the least frequently used paths, as it's really just a cut-through from East Drive to West Drive just below the 97th Street Transverse. And most people would rather take the more scenic path along the reservoir just below here or the more popular path above 97th. Or just bus it across 97th.
It's paths like the one below that make running every path kinda humorous to anybody paying attention. To get them all, I have to run down one path, up the next, and down the third. Fortunately, nobody really pays attention in New York.
There's another section down between the zoo and the pond and there are 5 or 6 paths side by side. That's fun.
The North Meadow is home to a dozen softball fields (literally, 12). I play soccer on these fields in the Fall.
It also has a rec center with basketball and handball courts in the center. And bathrooms, if you need them while you're up here.
Off to the north side of the meadow is a small trail that ducks down to a little arch.
The arch is one of the smallest and least known in the Park, mostly because it's almost entirely hidden from the North Meadow, and on the other side is the much less-travelled Loch.
The Loch is one of those places in the Park that very few tourists wander because you can't see the City and they get scared because they don't know where they are or if it's safe.
It's safe. At least in the day time. There are no lights in here at night. And although I've never felt scared running through here at night, I wouldn't recommend it.
There are two main paved trails paralleling the Loch...
...and then the side trails are all wood chips.
The Loch begins at the Pool (the body of water - not a swimming pool, although confusingly enough the Loch ends at Lasker Pool - the swimming pool on the north side of the Park). So that paved path I mentioned before runs alongside the Loch through Glen Span Arch. I'm standing next to a waterfall fed by the Pool to take this picture.
The sun was setting, and don't tell Central Park but I cheated on her and ran over to Riverside Park to watch the sunset over there. Sometimes I just want to check in on the Hudson River and see how she's doing.
She's good.
It's amazing how many people run and bike along Riverside Park. You can go for miles.
It was a good day. Which I'm glad because my left achilles feels like it's strained so I'm gonna have to lay off the running for a few days and let it rest back to normal.
I had planned to knock out the entire section from 86th down to 79th, but after the sun set and the wind picked up, I bailed on the west side. I'll get those paths later.
Running every path in an area takes a lot of retracing steps. If you click on that strava map, you can drag your mouse along my pace on the bottom and see my little dot run around and around in circles. I try to make big circles so it's not as obvious, but I think the kids playing basketball figured I was up to something when I ran straight through mid-court.
The first photo-op I ran into today was the Obelisk. Did you know this thing is legit 3465 years old? I read up on it this evening.
I love the part about how they just spent two years cleaning and preserving it and when they removed years of dirt and pollution they found new hieroglyphs they didn't know about before.
Next stop was the Turtle Pond.
Which, you gotta wonder, where do the turtles go when the pond freezes over?
Turning out to the East, you go through this arch...
...and then out to the Met, where you'll see these three bears.
