Out of Our Rut: Myrtle Beach and Beyond

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When investigating things to do in Myrtle Beach, Brookgreen Gardens was near the top of most lists. From what we could tell, this gardens was mainly a display of sculptures - more than 2000 pieces. That, by itself, wasn’t a strong selling point for me but there was also a small zoo and beautiful grounds to explore as well. The other drawback is the admission price of $22 per person, but we decided to give it a try and headed there early one morning midweek. The tickets are good for 7 consecutive days but I doubted we would make a return visit. The property consists of over 9000 acres, although the bulk of the grounds open to the public is more on the order of several hundred acres - still pretty big.

The property was purchased by Archer and Anna Huntington in 1930. They were a rich couple from New York City looking for a warmer place to spend the winter months. Anna was a noted sculptor and the plan was to develop a retreat for her to develop her pieces. They built their home close to the ocean. Atalaya Castle is now part of Huntington Beach State Park right across the street from Brookgreen Gardens. My previous blog post shows the unusual home. We head to the welcome center to get a feel for the place and to determine if there were any special programs taking place today. While Chris liked the metal goat lawn ornaments, even the smallest one wasn’t going to work with our current nomadic lifestyle.

Beautiful Lily Pond

Archway Tunnel

Metal Goats

It was a cool day but we decided to concentrate on the various outdoor gardens and save the inside galleries for later in the day. One thing became clear right off the bat, the number of groundskeepers far exceeded the number of visitors. They were gearing up for something called “Night of a Thousand Candles”. This event takes place during the winter holidays but we are a couple weeks early so we only get to see the crew strings the lights and placing the nearly 3000 hand lit candles all around the gardens.

Lights Captured in a Mason Jar

Walkway of Lights

Griffin

Live Oak Draped in Lights

Even with the map provided, it is difficult to wander the grounds with the hopes of seeing it all. We intended to follow the numerous paths through the various garden areas in a systematic fashion but invariably, my eye would get a glimpse of some unusual statue or flower and deviate from our planned route.

Archer

Planter

The sculptures ran the gamut from bronze, aluminum, concrete and marble. Some were larger than life sized while others were more diminutive. Many of the larger statues are incorporated into a pool or fountain. Each piece has a plaque giving the name of the artist, date and possible some other interesting details.

Fish Head Theme

Graceful Piece

Up, Up, and Away

Jack Reacher on a Horse?

I was particularly drawn to some of the ponds with lily pads and lots of colorful flowers.

Another Lily

At one end of the gardens is a third of a mile grass path out to the Waccamaw River and a viewing platform. From the looks of things, this low lying area is likely closed during the wet times of year. At one end of this path is a 100 foot diameter labyrinth. It is difficult to get a good sense for how unusual the pattern is from ground level. As we work our way back into the gardens, we find more things to catch our eyes. One narrow path is bordered by poles with red and white spheres. As I walked thru them, I thought how cool this would look lit up after dark.

Hallway of Spheres Awaiting Dark

One open air sculpture court has dozens of assorted pieces with many sculptures of animals, people and some downright strange creations.

Looking into Open Air Court

Moose Battle

Checking the Water

Even though we had spent 2 hours exploring many of the outside gardens, there were still other sections we had not gotten to plus we still had all the buildings to go thru. And we hadn’t even checked out the zoo yet! We realized then, that there was a reason that your admission ticket was good for multiple days. We head back to the car to eat our lunch although they do have a restaurant at Brookgreen. We decided that we were a bit “sculptured out” so we drove over to the Low Country Zoo on the other side of the grounds. We knew we would need to come back a second day to try to complete the rest of the areas we missed but we thought the zoo would be worth checking out before we head out for the day.

We arrive at the parking lot for the zoo to find a large group of grade school aged kids getting lined up to enter the zoo. We figure this could make for a noisy and chaotic visit if we get stuck in the middle of 30 kids. The zoo at Lowcountry Zoo is not very big with only animals native to this part of the country - so no lions and tigers and bears. There is a mile long path thru the zoo that brings visitors to each of the various animal habitats.

The first stop is the Cypress Swamp Aviary. This is a really neat enclosure that opened in 1977. It has a 90 foot tall center pole and eight 70 foot high poles around the perimeter of about 60 foot diameter octagon with fencing and netting providing a home for a few dozen birds. It is actually built on top of an existing cypress swap with a boardwalk running through it. After going thru the double doors, you are right in with the birds. They have apparently grown accustomed to having human visitors because they really showed no concern with us being near them. The black-crowned night heron were particularly friendly and would perch on the railings.

Black-crowned Night Heron

Balanced on a Wire

Intense Eye

Neck Extended

There are also white ibis and two types of egrets living here. The snowy egrets are always a favorite of mine with its intricate white plumage.

Snowy Egret

After exiting the aviary, we get to the river otter habitat. These guys move fast and have a large indoor pool with a glass viewing area to watch them swim by. If the glass was a bit cleaner, it might be possible to get better pictures. The outdoor area encompasses a large space with a pond and lots of dry land for the otters to play on and chase one another.

River Otter Speeds By

Two River Otters Smooching

Playing in the Water

The next large area was for the red fox. Try as we might, we never spotted a fox. The birds of prey aviaries has several smaller enclosures for a few different species of these types of birds. Many of these birds have been injured and are not able to survive in the wild so they get to live their lives watching people watching them. None of the cages are configured to get decent photos of these magnificent birds but I tried my best.

Bald Eagle

Great Horned Owl

Very Patterned Feathers

Barred Owl

Pair of Barn Owls

Hawk

The waterfowl aviary was next in line. This has a similar setup as the cypress swamp enclosure but on a small scale since the birds living here are much smaller. The wood ducks are so colorful and the blue bills of the ruddy ducks always look fake. On our way to the next stop, we spotted a Sherman’s fox squirrel. These are a rather large and distinctive squirrel that we aren’t familiar with. Native to this part of the southeastern USA, they live in the zoo but aren’t formal residents.

Colorful Wood Duck in Snoozing Position

Ruddy Duck Swims By

Sherman's Fox Squirrel

The four acre red wolf habitat is quite nice. It just opened in July 2023 so the three residents are probably still getting used to the new digs. The first day we came here, all three of them were sleeping in the far reaches of the enclosure and we nearly missed seeing them at all. When we made our return trip a couple days later, they were all up and moving about the pen. We stood and watched them for a long time just admiring them as they prowled their grounds.

Red Wolf

Walking Enclosure Perimeter

Adjacent to the zoo is the Floyd Family Heritage Farm. There are a few cattle, sheep and Chris’ favorite - goats. The goats were rather active during our visit. They have several small structures and large fallen trees to climb on and play with. Several of them were having head butting competitions.

Avoid Those Horns

Spotted Goat

Size Mismatch

Getting Ready to Head Butt

We finished up the first visit by walking through the children’s storybook forest. No kids were present so we could wander around the various themed buildings from the Crooked Man’s crooked house to a castle and a pirate ship. The butterfly garden right next door was closed for the season so nothing to see there but for the large, butterfly shaped planter in front.

Rapunzel's Castle

The Crooked Man's House

Butterfly Planter

We head back to Brookgreen Gardens a couple days later with a mission to finish up the areas we missed the first time. We did go back to the zoo first this time and had some better luck with some of the animals being out and about. We also had a few of the outside gardens to explore that we didn’t get to before.

I Can Fly

Relaxing Dog

From Don Quixote

Glass Bottle Art

The Offner Sculpture Center was an interesting place to check out. It houses hundreds of the works of various artists that are being stored. But instead of having the sculptures crated up out of sight, they have them displayed for the public just in a more utilitarian setting. There were some very unusual pieces in this building.

Extra Sculptures in Offner Center

Women on His Mind

The last place for us to check out was the Bleifield Gallery. This is a rather small building with only a couple dozen pieces on display. All the subjects are from the natural world - mostly birds. The level of detail in some of the pieces was just amazing.

Bird in Flight

Detailed Plumage

Bird and Its Reflection

We left Brookgreen Gardens having spent over 6 hours in the course of 2 days. I was originally skeptical of how much I would enjoy the place and came away really liking the variety of things to see and the beauty of the grounds. It’s well worth the visit.

We had one more day in the Myrtle Beach area to explore. We head north to Little River South Carolina close to the state line. We had an Adventure Lab and some geocaches to find in Vereen Gardens. This is a much smaller park than Brookgreen, but is more typical of the type of place we visit. There are a couple miles of hiking trails as well as a quarter mile long boardwalk that gets us over the tidal marshes and out to the Intracoastal Waterway.

Entrance to Vereen Gardens

Overlooking Marsh

Boardwalk

There is a section of “beach” along the water that is completely composed of shells. It was very pretty and crunchy to walk on. The small trees and bushes that are along the shore of this beach were full of “wishing shells”. The idea is simple, find a shell you like, hang it on a branch and make a wish. There were many hundreds of shells hanging on the branches near here.

Shell Beach

Wishing Shells

The trail system was nice and allowed us to get in a decent hike. Along the route was a stop at the Vereen Family Cemetery. Some of the family from the late 1700’s that purchased 400 acres of land in this part of the county are buried on a small plot in the present day park.

Statue in Cemetery

Nice Trail in the Woods

We enjoyed our weeklong stop in Myrtle Beach but it was time for us to move further south. We have 6 nights before our planned stop in St Augustine Florida. We had debated stops in the Charleston or Savannah areas but since we have already visited both of those places in the past few years, we decided to look for other areas. About 60 miles due east of Savannah is Jack Hill State Park. We weren’t sure what there was to do in the area of Reidsville Georgia but we had reserved a spot for 5 nights to cover us over Thanksgiving.

We used an Elks Lodge in Walterboro South Carolina as a one night stopover about midway between Myrtle Beach and Reidsville. The lodge was closed on the Sunday afternoon we arrived, but they have a pretty good sized parking lot that is reasonably level. There are no camping services but with our new solar panel and lithium battery upgrade, we won’t even need to run the generator to spend the night comfortably. The lodge is only about 2 miles off of Interstate 95 so it makes for an excellent overnight stop if we happen to pass thru the area again.

We arrive at Jack Hill State Park without having any issues, but since it is a weekday, it did take a little bit of searching to discover where we need to show up to register for our site. It’s isn’t a very big campground but we manage to get into our spot only needing to ask one neighbor to move his truck out of the way to back in. The site is nice with full hookups, 50 amp electric and even good reception of over the air TV stations. The state park does have a hiking trail, golf course and a lake that our site overlooks.

View from Our Campsite

Rental Pontoon Boats

Our Rig

Turns out there isn’t a whole lot to do in the area surrounding Reidsville. Fortunately Chris had realized this before we came here so she had done all the grocery shopping needed for our Thanksgiving dinner in advance. We did take the opportunity of being in a new area of Georgia to go out for some geocaches in counties we have never been to before. We ended up getting to 16 different counties during our stay but it wasn’t necessarily very easy. There was one county just to the west of camp that actually only has one geocache hidden in all of its 371 square miles! Many of the other counties only have a handful of hides, so if we came up empty looking for the closest one to our route, we would need to go miles out of our way for a backup cache.

We did see some interesting places along the way. We walked around Vidalia Georgia and saw lots of onion themed things. We also did an Adventure Lab in Statesboro that gave us an excuse to explore a place we likely would have never seen otherwise. We did laugh at the one sign at a park in town that was simply the word “BORO”. As we were planning this trip from New York to Florida over the summer months, I had picked stops at Elks Lodges in Waynesboro, Greensboro and Walterboro. So we had been joking that this trip south was our BORO tour, so a visit to Statesboro seemed fitting.

Sweet Onion City

Oversized Onion

Been to Any Other Boros Lately?

Fountain in Statesboro

Possibly the “highlight” of our stop here in this part of Georgia was in the nearby town of Claxton. Have you ever wondered where those wonderful fruit cakes come from? Well it turns out that they likely came from the Claxton Fruit Cake bakery in downtown. They have been in business since 1910. So if you are like me and just assumed the first thousand fruit cakes ever made a hundred years ago were still in circulation, just being re-gifted from one family to another as a bad joke; well the joke is on us, you can still buy fresh fruit cake! Based on my sarcasm, it goes without saying that we didn’t stop by to replenish our supply.

Where They All Come From

We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner and just took it easy. Since the golf course was closed that day, we were able to go out and walk the golf cart paths to work off some of the calories before the tryptophan did its magic.