Mexico? South of the Border?

 Here are some photos from Saturday's geocaching adventure.

sombreros?

senors?

big sombreros?

Pedro 

South of the Border is a spot off Interstate 95 just south of the North Carolina border. The nearest town is Dillion SC. There is a story to South of the Border: In 1949, Mr. Alan Schafer built a simple 18x36 foot beer stand known as South of the Border Beer Depot. As it adjoined the North Carolina counties, which were dry of alcoholic beverages, business boomed. A few years later a 10-seat grill was added and the business re-named South of the Border Drive-in.

In 1954, Mr. Schafer added 20 motel rooms and changed the name to South of the Border.

One may ask, "How did Pedro come about?" Well, Mr. Schafer went to Mexico to establish import connections and met two young men. He helped them get admitted to the US, and they went to work at the motel office as bellboys for several years. People started calling them Pedro and Pancho, and eventually just Pedro.

The 97' Pedro (pictured above) stands next to the Mexico Shop East and the Sombrero Restaurant. (We had lunch there and I did a wee bit of shopping.) Pedro has 4 miles of wiring and weighs 77 tons. He stands 18' deep in solid clay. You could drive a car through his legs. The Sombrero Restaurant is located on the same spot as the original South of the Border Drive-in. 

There are stairs to the top of this 200' Observation Tower . A post card shows an elevator at the half-way mark. We did not get close enough to see if the glass elevator. We could clearly see the stairs.

SOB is also known for its numerous billboards counting down the miles to the exit. Those of us from the midwest ar familiar with that advertising trick used by Wall Drug in South Dakota.

There are NUMEROUS animal statues along the street in SOB. In fact we did two geocache activities related to finding the chickens, alligator, cows, elephant, flamingos, etc.

According to Wikipedia, at one time during its hey-day, 700 people were employed in the gift shops, restaurants, arcades, rides, hotel, campground, etc. It was the largest employer in the county. 

Many of the businesses were not open. My niece's husband said his family went there often when he was a kid. It was a fun place to go for a family vacation.  It definitely it not what it used to be! The brochure boasts indoor/outdoor pools, amusement rides,  5 restaurants, 7 gift shops, a reptile lagoon (the largest indoor reptile exhibit in the US), arcade, a campground, truck stop, small grocery store, mini golf course, and a fireworks stand. SOB was considered the half-way point for travelers from New York to Florida, in the early days of motor travel. It has since fallen on hard times.

This was probably the highlight of geocaching in SOB. We have been on the lookout for large geocache containers on this trip, but coming upon this huge metal locker, was a great surprise.

An Adventure Lab set of caches and also a Wherigo

both related to the statue animals 

the grandkids would have loved it!

there was also another walk in the woods

to find this hanging ammo container about 15' in the tree

a rope attached allowed us to lower and raise the container

The surprise to finding this were the little black ants that crawled out of the container and onto my shirt, onto my hands and arms where they began to bite. I was still finding those little itty-bitty bugs crawling around under my shirt an hour later. No big welts, just itty-bitty bites/stings.

The other reason for sticking around that area of North Carolina was to visit my niece and her family. We ate at a Japanese Hibachi for dinner and had an entertaining chef and LOTS of food on Saturday evening.

heating the rice for 9 people

the meat selections for the 9 of us

shrimp, beef, chicken

mushrooms, broccoli, and onions

he created an onion volcano

which impressed at least one of the 3 little boys

Our geocaching map after our SC geocaching. Twelve geocaches found, about 5 different cache types.