Pawleys Island & Litchfield

Drive south from Myrtle Beach and pay attention, because something changes pretty quickly and you don’t want to miss it. The billboards thin out. The traffic eases. The strip malls give way to moss-draped oaks and marsh views and the occasional weathered beach cottage that looks like it’s been sitting there since your grandparents were young. By the time you reach Pawleys Island you’re in a completely different version of the South Carolina coast, one that has been doing laid-back, unhurried, understated beach culture since the 1700s and has absolutely no interest in changing now.

Pawleys Island is one of the oldest resort areas in the United States, and that history is still in the air somehow, in the weathered wood of the cottages, in the rhythm of the place, in the fact that nobody here seems to be in a hurry to do anything at all. Litchfield Beach sits just north with excellent golf and a slightly more polished feel, while Huntington Beach State Park, which many people call the best state park in South Carolina, delivers three miles of pristine, undeveloped beach alongside Atalaya Castle, one of the more genuinely fascinating historic sites on the Carolina coast. This is the kind of place you stumble onto when you’re on the way to somewhere else and end up coming back to every summer for the rest of your life.