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Sea Islands to the Grand Strand

By Daniel Leventhal | Published October 15, 2019

The Drive North.  

Hello again, everyone. The Southern Road Trip continues but it is time to turn around and head home. In this post, we will start the drive northward back to New York. We will make it all the way to the South Carolina/North Carolina state line.  In the map below, at the bottom left is our starting point at Edisto Island, and in the upper right North Myrtle Beach and the state line.

First up, a couple of choice spots at Edisto Island along the coast near Charleston which I visited with my friends in Summerville. It is one of South Carolina’s Sea Islands. These are spring 2015 photos along with a few other shots towards the beginning of the set from that visit. Once we start approaching Georgetown County and Georgetown the entire balance of the set will be from the spring 2019 drive.

Edisto Island is not far from Charleston. You can see it just below Charleston in the map below. I loved both of the beaches we visited – Edisto Beach and Botany Bay Beach (also known as Boneyard Beach). Those salt washed skeletons of stranded coastal trees are at Boneyard Beach, which is part of the Botany Bay Plantation Wildlife Management Area – at the site of two former plantations on the island (one of which was called fittingly “Bleak House” – there are some ruins not far from the path out to the beach). I understand that Boneyard Beach was damaged in the last couple of big storms along the coast. I did not return this spring. My friends tell me that it looks a lot different now. Read more about Botany Bay here. The photos are far better than mine. (My light was decent afternoon light but not great – it needed to be later in the day.)

Did you know that a lot of “Forrest Gump” was filmed in South Carolina? Now you do. Most of the water shots involving Forrest and Lt. Dan on the shrimp boat were shot around Coosaw Island and Lady’s Island, near Beaufort, right by Edisto Island.

Check out the menu at SeeWee restaurant where I stopped for a delicious lunch in Awendaw north of Charleston. Southern home cooking time! 

McClellenville was a fantastic stop. It’s a beautifully situated historic fishing town north of Charleston on 17. Home of the Lowcountry Shrimp Festival. It is at the edge of the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge and, as you can see from the map, surrounded by Francis Marion National Forest.  

As we work our way up the coast, Georgetown will be the next stop. It has what seems to be a thriving little downtown. Another one for my punching-above-its-weight list of great American small towns.

As I approached the Grand Strand along the coast in the northern part of the state, my guidebook called out two stops in particular: Pawleys Island and Brookgreen Gardens.

Lunch on Highway 17 by Pawley Islands was at Hog Heaven. It’s a buffet. $8.15 until 5 pm. The price jumps to $10.15 for the evening. All you can eat. Some of the most amazing, delicious fried chicken I have ever had. Five stars.

Did you know that Brookgreen Gardens sculpture garden and wildlife preserve (opened in 1932 and built on the site of four former rice plantations) contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of American figurative sculpture in the country? Who knew? I didn’t – I had never heard of it. The gardens are gorgeous.

We’ll end this set in Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach along the Grand Strand. I had heard a lot about the Myrtle Beach area and have to say it was a bit of a letdown. A little too tacky and commercial for me (“naff” as my English friends would say). I give it a “meh” rating – I just didn’t see what was so grand. The fact that it was pouring rain most of the time I was there didn’t help with first impressions. If you like mini-golf it’s the place – dozens and dozens of choices. The businesses along 17 had an impressive collection of giant marine life to lure customers in. It’s sort of an American Blackpool. Nice beaches when the rain stopped…

Next post: we’ll get all the way to the North Carolina barrier islands: the famed Outer Banks. What a contrast to disappointing, over-commercialized Myrtle Beach. Lovely. Stay tuned.

Click on (or tap) an image to expand it (and use the arrow to the right on an expanded image to go through the set, if preferred over scrolling down in the post).